The Dog Who Saved the World

So here we are, the evening of the same day, back in the Spanish City.

‘Ha ha ha haaa!’ cackles Dr Pretorius again and I honestly don’t think she’s acting. I think she’s just excited.

Beyond the double doors it’s dark – I mean, totally dark – till Dr Pretorius barks, ‘Studio lights!’ and brilliant pinpoint lights flicker to life on thin metal rails that criss-cross the domed ceiling high, high above us.

We’re in a vast, round windowless room with walls clad entirely – floor to ceiling – with a dull dark green … foam, I suppose? It looks spongy, although I don’t dare touch it. The ceiling and floor are matt black, and in the centre of the room is a single deckchair: the old-fashioned type with red-and-white striped canvas. That’s it.

We are inside the dome of the Spanish City – the mosque-like building that dominates the seafront of Whitley Bay – and it is huge.

‘You like?’ says Dr Pretorius, sweeping a proud arm into the blackness, and her voice echoes round the vast emptiness.

‘Yeah!’ I say, and Ramzy nods, but before I’ve finished my syllable she turns and glares.

‘Liar! How can you? You have no idea what this is. I warned you: you must tell me the truth, and only the truth! Now, I’ll try again. You like?’

‘Erm …’ I don’t know what to say this time, and I’m scared I’ll get it wrong again. This Dr Pretorius is pretty intimidating. Ramzy rescues me.

‘To be honest, Dr Pretorius,’ he says, ‘there’s norra great deal to like. But I’d certainly call it impressive. Striking. Erm … remarkable.’

‘Ha! You’re learning! That’s more like it. You know a lot of words. Where are you from, kid? That north-eastern accent’s mixed up with something else, isn’t it?’

Ramzy hesitates. ‘Well, my home country doesn’t really exist any more. There was a war and, well …’

‘I get it, kid. We’re all lookin’ for a home, huh? Well, this is mine. Welcome to my lab-ratory, or – as you English say – my la-bor-atory, ha! Come this way. Stay to the side. And … hold up a second.’ She sniffs the air. ‘Can you smell … burning rubber?’

‘I’m sorry. That, erm … that’s Mr Mash. He has a slight erm … digestive problem.’

Dr Pretorius’s hand covers her face and her voice is muffled. ‘You don’t say!’ She looks at Mr Mash and then her gaze flicks to the door as if she’s considering sending him out, but she doesn’t. It makes me like her a little more.

My eyes have become accustomed to the gloom, and we follow her round the side of the circular room. She pulls aside a thick green curtain to reveal a narrow doorway, and the three of us, plus Mr Mash, squeeze through.

‘Control-room lights!’

Blue-white strip lights come on to reveal a long room with white tiles on the floor and walls. There are workbenches, sinks, a big fridge, an eight-ring cooker and a black iron grill. It’s obvious that this was once a restaurant kitchen.

Along one wall, above a wooden desk, are three huge, blank computer screens and a large keyboard with coloured keys – the kind they have in the tech lab at school. And everywhere – on every shelf, on every surface – are endless bits of … stuff. Boxes of wires, components, tiny tools, rolls of gaffer tape, a soldering iron, boxes of screws and nails, and a selection of eye-shields, helmets, gloves and glasses for use with virtual-reality games. Some of them are dusty and look years old, with different names on them. Google, Vis-Art, Apple, Ocean Blue, Samsung … Some of the names I recognise but most I don’t.

On one aluminium worktop lies a computer and a monitor – an old one, from the last century, with its insides spilling out as though it’s been dropped and no one has swept up the pieces. I don’t think anyone has swept anything, to be honest: the whole place is pretty rank.

Below the desk are several cabinets, housing – I suppose – the actual workings of the computers. A few lights blink but they make no sound, not even a hum.

On a worktop next to a sink is a wooden board with a wrapped loaf of bread, and some butter and cheese, plus a load of dirty cups. Mr Mash has found some crumbs and snuffles around, trying to locate some more.

Dr Pretorius eases her long body into a wheeled desk chair, adjusts her spectacles and taps the keyboard on the desk, which makes the middle screen come to life.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ says Dr Pretorius but she doesn’t sound sorry at all.

Her fingers tap and type while page after page scrolls up on the screen. The two other computer monitors light up with images that flash by, too fast to see properly, before they stop on a picture of a beach.

It’s a moving image, from three different angles, one on each screen.

I look at Ramzy, who has been silent since we walked in. He gazes at the screens, his mouth hanging open.

‘Don’t worry, guys,’ says Dr Pretorius behind us. ‘It gets better. Here.’ She holds a bicycle helmet in each hand, and waits for our reaction. ‘Well, put ’em on,’ she says, eventually. ‘Adjust them so they’re a good fit, and make ’em tight: tighter than you’d normally wear.’

A tiny earbud plugs snugly into each ear. She helps us with the straps and buckles, fiddling and pulling, till Ramzy says, ‘Argh! It’s too tight!’

‘Can you breathe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it isn’t too tight. OK – follow me. The dog stays here.’ She leads us out of the control room and back into the studio and we stand with our backs to the foamy green wall.

I look down and realise for the first time that we’re standing on a kind of path that runs round the whole of the circular floor. The floor itself is a huge disc filled with … what? I bend down to look closer.

‘One-millimetre matt-black ball bearings,’ says Dr Pretorius beside me. ‘Billions of them, half a metre deep. You can walk on them – it’s OK. They’re packed tight. You won’t sink.’

She stands before us, checking the helmets and finally lowering a curved steel bar that attaches to the helmets like a visor. It rests above our eyes. ‘That’s the 3D generator,’ she says. ‘It’ll dazzle a bit but you’ll get used to it. You’ll probably also feel a little discomfort on your scalp, but it’s nothin’ to worry about.’

Ramzy says, ‘This is just like the Surround-a-Room at Disney World!’

I get the impression that that was not the right thing to say, although I can’t be sure. Dr Pretorius blinks slowly and takes a deep breath through her nose, as though considering her response. Eventually, she says, ‘Dead right, sonny. Only this is waay better. This is a game that’s gonna change the world. OK, this way.’

She leads us towards the deckchair. The ball bearings feel odd underfoot, like walking on soft gravel. ‘When the program starts,’ Dr Pretorius says, ‘the floor will shift a little beneath you. It might feel strange at first but you’ll get used to it.’ She turns and goes back into the control room, pulling the curtain behind her and closing the door with a thunk. In my ear, there’s a crackling noise, then I hear her say, ‘Ready? OK – let’s do this!’

It is only then that I realise that I have no idea what I’m doing. I have just gone along with this unquestioningly, strapping on a weird bicycle helmet, stepping on to a floor made of tiny balls, beneath a vast dark dome, while outside people stroll around and eat ice creams, and …

I have exactly the same feeling as the first time I went on a roller coaster. I must have been about six. I was with Dad, and we were in the front car. It had crawled up a steep slope, and it was only when we got to the top that I looked down and realised that I was much higher than I wanted to be.

Five minutes before now – less! – I was banging on the big double door with a wolf’s-head knocker and now I’m about to test some new … what? A game? Who IS this woman?

I am terrified. How, I am wondering, did I end up here?

‘Ramzy? I don’t like this.’ I reach out and grip Ramzy’s hand, then I call out, ‘Stop!’ and then louder, ‘STOP!’

But it’s too late. The pin lights in the ceiling all go off and everything goes dark.

Exactly where we’re standing in the Spanish City was – till very recently – a restaurant, although I never went inside it. Years before that it was a ballroom, then a discotheque, with cafes and amusement arcades; outdoors there was a permanent funfair dominated by a huge white dome, and the whole thing was called the Spanish City.

Granda, who grew up here before he moved to Scotland with Gran, says he remembers an ancient, rattling roller coaster made of wood and iron called the Big Dipper. By the 1990s, though, the Spanish City was almost a ruin, and it stayed like that for years, apparently.

It was all refurbished a few years ago, and there’s no funfair now, and no Big Dipper. But there are still ice-cream shops and cafes in another section – swanky, expensive ones like the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms that make Granda suck his teeth and go, ‘You’re kidding! That much for a pot of tea! I tell you, when I was a kid …’ and so on.

The king visited the Spanish City once, before he was the king. I was a baby, and there’s a picture of me and Mum, and the king looks like he’s smiling at me, although that’s just the angle of the picture. He was smiling at something else. It’s in a frame in our hallway.

Anyway, last winter the restaurant under the dome closed down. No one knew why. Saskia Hennessey’s mum worked as a waitress there and one day she was called in and told she no longer had a job. But … she was given a shedload of money, the family all went to Florida and had brand-new laptops when they came back, and Mrs Hennessey got a job at the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms, anyway.

It was the same for everyone who worked there, according to Sass.

One day: busy restaurant. Next day: removal vans being loaded with tables and chairs. Week after: builders moving in with sledgehammers and skips.

It all still looks the same from the outside. But no one knows what’s going on inside. Well, no one knew – till Ramzy and I met Dr Pretorius.

One day, before the October half-term, Ramzy and I were walking home from school and I was talking to him about all this, and about me meeting the king, wondering out loud what on earth was happening, when he just marched up to a bloke in an orange jacket and a hard hat who was pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks and broken wood by the big back doors of the Spanish City building.

‘Excuse me, sir – what’s happening in there?’ Ramzy asked him, while I cringed with embarrassment. (‘Sir’!) Mr Springham, our teacher, says Ramzy has ‘no social filter’: he’ll talk to anyone.

The man seemed glad of the chance to rest his load.

‘Haven’t a clue, son. Perfec’ly good restaurant, aal ripped oot! Big shame if y’ask me. Looka that …’ He pointed at a large slab of shiny stone in his barrow. ‘Nice big piece of Italian marble, tharriz. Come to think of it, I’ll have that for meself, like. It’ll make a canny garden table!’

‘So … what’s going in instead?’ says Ramzy. The man took off his hard hat and wiped his brow with his forearm. He looked up at the dome.

‘Dunno, son. Some sort of music or film studio, I reckon. There’s a load of fancy equipment goin’ in next week. Y’know: lights an’ projectors, an’ computers an’ that.’ He nodded to an elderly-looking lady in a hard hat who was crouching and checking the labels on a stack of silver canisters like fire extinguishers. She turned and stared at us, fiercely. I didn’t recognise her, not at first.

‘Aye, aye. Cannit stay here gabbin’ wi’ yous. Ol’ Dr Wotsit over there’ll be on to us.’ He picked up his barrow and resumed his work.

Ramzy turned to me. ‘See? You’ve only got to ask!’

As we walked away, I looked back and the old lady had stood up and was still staring at us. She was tall and thin, and I looked away. A few metres further on, I dared to glance back again, and she was still looking at us, and I felt as though I’d been caught doing something wrong.

I recognised her: I had seen her sometimes down on the beach, swimming. Even in the winter.

Whatever she was building was huge as well. The silver canisters I recognised as Liquid Weld: Dad uses it in his car workshop, but he only has one of them. The old lady must have had about twenty.

I looked back again, and something happened. A look? A connection? I don’t know, but I had the definite feeling that she was watching us both for a reason. I think she even smiled to herself, satisfied with something, or perhaps I was imagining it.

Back in the dead-dark Dome, without warning, the curved metal band above my eyes glows a dazzling blue-white – a light that is so sharp it almost hurts. I squint and, as the brilliance fades away, shapes begin to form in front of me. Within seconds, long, thin poles become palm trees, and the dark floor turns white as it’s transformed before my eyes into a tropical beach.

And I mean a real beach: not some corny yellow virtual-reality beach, with clunky graphics, viewed through a heavy headset. This is much, much more realistic than anything I’ve ever seen in any VR device.

I let go of Ramzy’s hand and he says, ‘Whoaaaaa!’ – a long sigh of amazement.

In front of us is the deckchair, and now, to either side of it, stretches a wide crescent of creamy-white sand, fringed with palm trees, leading down to a rippling turquoise ocean a few metres in front of us.

I turn round 360 degrees. The illusion is perfect. I look up, and the blue sky has little clouds in it, and there’s a darker grey cloud on the horizon.

Then I notice the sounds: the breeze; the scratching noise that palm leaves make in the wind; the breaking of the little waves; an old moped going past on a distant road. From behind me is the sound of tinny music. I turn, and there’s a shack selling drinks where the music is coming from. Behind the counter stands a grinning barman. I smile and lift my hand in greeting.

He waves back. His movements are not at all jerky, although his arm becomes a little pixelated, and there’s a slightly dark outline around him.

OK, I’m thinking. This is pretty good – no, it’s more than pretty good, it’s excellent but, you know …

I don’t want to sound cynical and spoiled, but I mean, I have played virtual-reality games before. This is good, and definitely better than the one at Disney World, but … well, why the big secrecy?

‘It’s pretty good!’ I say out loud, looking around again.

‘Pretty good?’ shouts Dr Pretorius through the earpiece and it makes me jump. In just a few seconds, I’d almost forgotten that I was actually inside a large dark dome in Whitley Bay. ‘Pretty good? Is that the best you can do? Pretty good?’ Her normally deep voice has become a squeak.

‘I … I’m sorry. I mean, it’s excellent. It’s …’

‘Touch the sand! Go on – it won’t bite you! Touch the sand!’

I hunker down, stretch my hand down into the sand and give a little squeal of amazement. You see, I know that under my feet is a half-metre-thick layer of tiny metal balls. But that’s not what I touch. Instead, I touch …

Sand. At least, that is what it feels like.

The grains trickle between my fingers. I gasp and hear Dr Pretorius’s throaty chuckle. ‘It’s better than “pretty good”, isn’t it?’

I nod. ‘Yes. It … it’s perfect!’

‘Ha! Not quite, but thank you, anyway. Touch the sand again and feel it carefully.’

I reach out and pick up another handful of sand. Ramzy does the same and says, ‘It’s … cold? Shouldn’t it be warmer from the sunshine?’

‘Hmph,’ she says, then there’s a rattling of the keyboard. ‘How is it now?’

Suddenly the sand is warmer. ‘Not too warm?’ she asks, and I shake my head, stunned into silence.

‘What the …?’ I look over to Ramzy and his face is contorted in pure terror. ‘Georgie! Behind you!’

I swing round and I scream. About five metres away, a scorpion the size of a coffee table is raising its huge pincers at me, its quivering tail arched over its back, and it’s advancing towards me.

I have only ever seen scorpions in pictures and on TV. They’re not – I’m very glad to say – native to the north-east coast of England. But I know this much: they’re no bigger than your hand, and they’re usually poisonous.

This one reminds me of a huge, shiny black lobster, tinged with red, with an extra-long jointed tail that curves over its back. There’s a dark orange bulb at the end with a long spike. Its claws are like a crab’s and they snap together menacingly as the scorpion scuttles forward and then sideways on its eight jointed legs. I can see slight imperfections at the scorpion’s edges: a bit of blurring in the movement, like when the barman waved at me before.

Unfortunately, knowing that it’s a virtual-reality scorpion doesn’t make it much less scary.

‘Dr Pretorius!’ I shout. ‘Ramzy!’

Ramzy is frozen to the spot in fear, and all I hear in my ear is Dr Pretorius muttering, ‘Oh, for cryin’ out loud: not him again.’

The creature takes two scuttling steps towards me and I aim a desperate kick at it. To my astonishment, my foot connects with its claw. I feel my foot kick it – but still it comes forward. Without thinking, I run up the beach, away from the scorpion, which has raised itself up on its legs. It doesn’t appear to have eyes: instead, there are raised mounds on top of its head like glistening black half-footballs, but still – they seem to be looking right at me.