The Dog Who Saved the World

I notice a strange sensation as I run: it’s not exactly like running on sand. More like running on a bed of tiny metal balls, which shift beneath my feet, although right now I’m more interested in putting distance between me and a massive black scorpion.

‘Dr Pretorius! What is that thing?’ I yell. Ramzy has picked up the deckchair and throws it. His aim is good, but the chair passes straight through the scorpion, as though it is a ghost.

‘Tsk. Don’t worry,’ says Dr Pretorius through my earpiece, sounding more frustrated than anxious. Then she says, ‘Why, you little …’ but I think she’s talking to the scorpion.

Together, Ramzy and I retreat further up the beach, but still the scorpion comes at us, scampering through the sand two or three little steps at a time.

Then, without warning, it opens its pincers, rises up on its jointed, hairy legs and starts to sprint towards me. I turn to run and stumble forward, landing with my face in the sand at the exact moment that the band above my eyes goes dark.

Everything is silent.

When the pin lights come on again in the Dome a few seconds later, I’m still in the centre of the studio, panting. Ramzy is kneeling next to the upturned deckchair on the black floor where the scorpion was. Dr Pretorius comes out of the computer-control room and walks towards us through the floor of tiny steel beads, beaming with delight as I blink and pant.

‘Welcome to MSVR – multi-sensory virtual reality, kiddos! And congratulations on being the first people in the world to experience it.’ She clasps her long hands together and shakes her head, her halo of white hair quivering. ‘Nearly there,’ she says. ‘Nearly there!’

I’m still breathless after my encounter with the huge scorpion. Dr Pretorius notices and adds, ‘Aw, hey, honey. Sorry about Buster! He’s kind of a bug in the system. I must do somethin’ about that. He wouldn’t have hurt ya.’ Then she adds, ‘I don’t think, anyhow, ha!’

Ramzy and I sit on the long desk in the control room while Dr Pretorius bashes violently at the multicoloured keyboard like she’s playing whack-a-mole. In front of us we each have a can of supermarket cola and biscuits from a packet. If Ramzy is disappointed – I had promised him home-made scones – he doesn’t show it as he crams another two biscuits in his mouth. At our feet, Mr Mash snuffles around for dropped crumbs.

Dr Pretorius doesn’t look at us while she speaks.

‘You – bash-bash-tap – just sit there – tap-tap-BASH – and I’ll be with you in a minute – tappity-tappity-BASH-BASH – darn you! No – not you. Ah, the heck with it: I’ll sort it out later.’ She whacks the keyboard one last time and turns to us in her swivel chair. ‘It’s that darned scorpion. He’s gettin’ ahead of himself. He shouldn’t even be there.’

Ramzy and I nod as though we understand everything she’s saying.

There’s a slightly awkward pause before Dr Pretorius says, ‘So how was the Disney World Surround-a-Room?’ She practically spits the words and turns back to her keyboard as if the answer doesn’t matter, although it obviously does.

‘It was awesome,’ I begin, and then decide to backtrack. ‘I mean, awesome is probably overstating it. It was good. Very good. Pretty good. I mean, there are probably better ones. That is …’ I’m gabbling and I’m not even sure why.

Ramzy rescues me. ‘Do you know Surround-a-Room?’ he asks Dr Pretorius, more conversationally.

‘Know it? A little.’ She’s pretending she doesn’t care.

Ramzy and I exchange looks. For some reason, I think she knows it more than a little, but I don’t know why.

‘I just wrote some of the code, that’s all,’ she says. ‘The program that created it? The visuals, the audibles … that sorta thing. The massive goggles you had to wear. The rainforest Surround-a-Room is … well, it was like a child to me. A child that never grew up.’

Dr Pretorius gets to her feet suddenly and her voice is louder, the words tumbling out. ‘Remember the sand you touched? Remember how you could feel it – even though there was nothing there?’ I nod. ‘And the scorpion – when you kicked it, your foot connected, yeah? You felt it. But when you –’ she points at Ramzy, who jumps – ‘threw the deckchair at Buster, and it went straight through him? Did you wonder about that?’

‘Yes?’ we both say, slowly. I mean, I did wonder about it, but it was just one bit of a load of wondering I’ve been doing in the last ten minutes.

Dr Pretorius picks up the bicycle helmet that I was wearing and turns it upside down. The inside surface is dotted with tiny metal bumps.

‘Everything we see and hear and touch is processed in the brain. Without our brain, there’s nothing. Are you with me?’

Ramzy and I glance at each other, unsure where this is going, but Dr Pretorius isn’t even looking.

‘But your brain can be tricked. Optical illusions, magic tricks, déjà vu – they’re all tricks of the mind. We’ve been doing it since we lived in caves. And now this!’

She holds the helmet aloft like a trophy, glaring at us.

‘This, my friends, is the greatest illusion of them all. Or will be. The projector here –’ she runs her finger round the curved metal band that sat above my forehead – ‘deceives your eyes into seeing whatever scene is programmed. No more heavy goggles! But it is these that make the big difference. These nodes here, and here, and here …’ She’s pointing out the little metal bumps on the inside of the helmet that connected with my skull. ‘They send signals to the parietal lobe, and …’

‘Wait,’ says Ramzy. ‘To the what?’ I’m glad Ramzy’s here. For once, his habit of questioning everything is not an annoyance.

Dr Pretorius looks unhappy to be interrupted, but then she says, ‘It’s OK. It’s taken me a lifetime of study to understand this. The parietal lobe is the part of your brain that deals with touch and sound, and the other senses. With careful programming, the computer here can deliver signals to these nodes that will in turn send little electrical impulses to your parietal lobe and trick your brain into feeling, say, heat from a virtual sun. That’s actually an easy one. Sand is much trickier: to actually feel very fine grains running through your hands? That’s quite an illusion. I’m rather proud of it. Another cookie?’

I give her a blank look. I’m still trying to process this, and biscuits are not going to help. Ramzy, on the other hand, clearly thinks that they will help, and takes two more.

‘So, when I kicked the … that scorpion thing, it was what – a trick of the mind?’

‘Exactly! Just like the sand. The program tricked your brain into believing the scorpion was solid, and your foot felt it, just like your hands felt the sand – even though neither was there.’

‘And when I threw the deckchair –’ says Ramzy, spitting crumbs – ‘obviously, the chair just went straight through it.’

Dr Pretorius winks. ‘Smart kid. Though that’s something I’m working on.’ Then suddenly she claps her hands and gets to her feet. ‘Enough for today! There’s a lot more I have to do before it’s complete.’

‘You mean it’s not finished?’ queries Ramzy, taking the last biscuit as he hops down from the desk.

She says no more. Ramzy and I are silent as we follow Dr Pretorius out of the studio with Mr Mash and down the metal stairs to the empty loading bay. Instead of going to the door we came in, though, she doubles back and unlocks another door with a large, old-fashioned metal key.

‘Short cut,’ she says.

The door opens into the interior of the Spanish City arcade. There’s a noisy room full of slot machines and kiddie rides, the Gelato Parlour (which is just ice cream if you ask me), the expensive fish-and-chip shop and the Polly Donkin Tea Rooms. It feels like we’ve come through a secret entrance, although it was just a locked door.

The main arcade is a few metres in front of us, and we push through the crowd, but then I have to stop. Sass Hennessey’s mum has just served a plate of chips to a table outside the cafe when she catches my eye.

‘Hi, Georgie!’ she says as if Sass and I are best friends. Ramzy grins at her, even though he doesn’t know her, I don’t think. ‘Nice to see you, pet. And, er …’ She looks at Dr Pretorius curiously, probably wondering who she is.

I mumble, ‘Hi.’

‘How’s St Woof’s, Georgie? Saskia’s told me all about it,’ says Sass’s mum, gathering glasses from a table. I’m already hurrying towards the entrance and don’t answer. There is something in the way she looked at Dr Pretorius that has unnerved me.

I could be wrong. Maybe she does know who she is. Maybe Dr Pretorius is a regular in here. What do I know?

Dr Pretorius leads us out on to the busy street. ‘Come back same time tomorrow. And don’t forget: this is our secret! You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.’ She turns and goes back the way we came, and Ramzy and I watch her white hair bobbing above the crowds.

‘Well. That was pretty adventurous, wouldn’t you say, Georgie? Hey – Earth to Georgie!’

I’m miles away, staring up at the blacked-out upper windows of the Spanish City dome.

‘What can she mean, Ramzy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet …’

‘Dunno. We’ll probably get to test out some weapons or something: the Battle of the Giant Scorpions! Or …’

‘No. I don’t think so. This isn’t about games. This is about something else.’

Ramzy gives me a quizzical squint. ‘You don’t trust her?’ he says.

I think about this.

Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs.

Dr Pretorius was OK with Mr Mash. She definitely didn’t dislike him. She even tolerated his smelliness. (He dropped what Dad calls ‘a proper beefy eggo’ in the control room and she pretended not to notice. That was nice of her.)

On the other hand, we only met her this morning, and she’s already sworn us both to secrecy.

‘I don’t know,’ I say to Ramzy, eventually. ‘But there’s something going on.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘let’s find out. Same time tomorrow. It’ll be an adventure.’

I smile at him. ‘OK.’

So that’s that. We’re trusting her, for now.

And mad scientists have to be mad for a reason. Right?

For the next few weeks, our afternoons after school with Dr Pretorius settle into something of a routine. She never calls us on our phones, and we have no way of contacting her other than thumping on the door with the wolf’s-head knocker at a prearranged time and day. It is all very ‘old-school’ as Ramzy says, clearly thrilled.

Once inside, we sometimes test a new MSVR environment. Other times, though, we just hang out in the control room, watching, mesmerised, as she programs her computer to create new worlds for us to explore.

Once I had a headache afterwards, but it didn’t last long. Ramzy too. Dr Pretorius didn’t seem overly concerned, and gave us each a paracetamol.

(It turns out that it’s definitely a copter-drone under the blue tarpaulin, by the way. One day it was uncovered and lying flat: a bucket seat in the middle of ten spokes, each with rotor blades attached. It’s obviously home-made: there are exposed wires, and lumpy welding, and one bit beneath the seat is made from the bent lid of a McVitie’s biscuit tin. Dr Pretorius saw me staring and said, ‘Yup. That’s my next project. Solar-powered too: unlimited range.’)

And all the time we’re there, in the Dome, Dr Pretorius keeps telling us that we ‘ain’t seen nothin’ yet’. That there’s going to be a Big Experiment, although she won’t say what it is. She does check that we are keeping it all secret, though, by saying things like:

‘No one knows, huh? You two – my co-conspirators!’

‘We’re the only three people who know about this – what a gas that is!’

And if this all sounds a bit sinister written down, it doesn’t feel like it. As Ramzy says – so often that it’s now a bit annoying, to be honest – it feels like a huge adventure.

As for visiting Dr Pretorius, that requires deception, which I’m not keen on – but, as it turns out, I don’t actually have to lie:

1 I’ve got St Woof’s, plus, I’m a library monitor so I’m often late back from school.

2 Jessica is at work all the time these days, and hasn’t ever taken much notice of what I’m up to at school.

3 Clem has been doing his exams and only emerges from the Teen Cave to dump his teacups in the sink, so he never even asks.

4 And Dad? Dad’s just happy if I’m happy. Which I am, so, you know – yay!

Ramzy has it tougher. It’s not his dad: he drives a truck and is away on long deliveries most of the time. It’s his scary Aunty Nush, who I’ve only met once. She looks after Ramzy and his two little brothers and speaks hardly any English. She’s super strict. Ramzy has to lie a lot. It’s usually about doing extra study at school.

‘Ramzy, you’re only ten. There is no “extra study” at school.’

We’re walking to the corner shop after school, Ramzy’s school shorts flapping in the breeze. He looks a little ashamed. ‘I know, but she’s not going to phone the school to check, is she? She can hardly get past hello as it is. Anyway – you’re my study buddy. Just so you know.’

‘Thanks a lot! So now I’m a part of your lies?’

‘I haven’t got a choice, Georgie! My aunty’s a nightmare. She used to make me carry an electronic tracker till it sort of accidentally broke. She’d install one on my phone if it wasn’t such an antique.’ He holds up his ancient pay-as-you-go phone, which looks like it comes from the nineties.

We’ve reached the shop where the owner, Norman Two-kids, is sweeping the pavement outside. He glares at us and follows us in. (He glares at everyone, not just us. And Norman Two-kids is not his real name. Everyone just calls him that, thanks to his rule that no more than two schoolchildren can enter his shop at any time in case they steal all the sweets or something. He’s always shouting, ‘Nor-man two kids at once!’ in a high-pitched voice with a strong accent that we can’t place.)

Ramzy buys a top-up for his phone, which he pays for with a bag of loose coins, making Norman mutter under his breath with annoyance.

I always end up feeling a bit sorry for Ramzy. It’s his big puppy eyes, I guess, and his teeth, and his ears, and … well. I find myself taking off my library monitor badge and handing it to him. ‘Here. You can say you’re on the Library Committee as well. That should be good for a few late-homes.’

He grins his rabbit-tooth smile. ‘Thanks, study buddy!’

‘Just don’t let Mr Springham see you wearing it.’

He pins the badge on to his faded school shirt. ‘Let’s not forget,’ he says, ‘that Dr Pretorius is old and she’s lonely! We’re doing a service for the community!’ and that removes any remaining guilt I might have had at my slight deception.

We head to the Spanish City, as we always do.

We go to the Dome, as we always do, and Dr Pretorius sits at the computer, as she always does.

We play a game in the virtual-reality environment, as we always do.

But then, when we take off the helmets, Dr Pretorius says something she doesn’t always say.

‘I guess you want to know what this is all about, huh?’

We stare at her. Of course we do. But neither of us can think what to ask.

She gives a final, decisive whack on her keyboard to begin a rendering of a huge Roman arena, with gladiators and chariots, then she swings her chair round and looks at us hard.

There’s a silence while we wait for her to speak, and I study her old, lined face. Her sky-blue eyes are as sharp and captivating as ever, but her skin seems paler, duller, and I immediately understand when she coughs violently and says, ‘I may not have long left, kiddos. I’m engaged in a battle against time, and there’s stuff I need to complete before I … before I leave you.’

Ramzy frowns. ‘Aww. Are you moving?’ I roll my eyes at him. Even I knew what she meant, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

Instead, she barks, ‘Moving? Ha! Do I have to spell it out, kid? I’m dyin’. A fatal heart condition that the finest physicians in the land are powerless to combat. And before I check out I need to know that my life hasn’t been wasted, you know?’

Ramzy just goes, ‘Oh,’ and looks at his scuffed shoes.

‘Yep. Oh, indeed. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’

There it is: that phrase again. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. What on earth could it be that is so big and important?

‘I tell ya, kids, it’s going to be extraordinary. You’ll be the first to experience it.’

I think she wants us to go ‘Wow!’ or something, or even just say thank you, so I do.

‘Wow,’ I say but I don’t think I’m very convincing. The silence afterwards is a bit awkward, so I fill it by saying the one thing that I have been wondering.

‘Why us?’

She grins her wolfish grin. ‘You wanna know? You wanna know the whole truth?’

When someone asks you that, there’s only one answer you can give, even though the outcome might be uncomfortable. I shrug one shoulder and say, ‘I guess?’

She turns back to her keyboard and taps it a few times till a series of still photos appear. They’re satellite pictures of the street outside – Marine Drive – which leads to our school. A few more clicks show pictures of Ramzy and me, taken from a distance, but pretty sharp. The pictures scroll down, one after the other: Ramzy in his thick, too-big coat in the winter, the two of us riding FreeBikes one day, me in my red, white and blue costume for the school’s International Flags day … And so on.

Ramzy speaks up, a touch of indignation in his voice, ‘You … you were spying on us?’ I have to say, it’s all a bit creepy.

‘Aah, relax, kid! Look: what do you notice about these pictures?’

We peer at them, but I can’t think of anything (apart, obviously, from how strange it is to be photographed without knowing it). Eventually, Dr Pretorius says, ‘Look, guys – you’re the only two on your own! Every other kid is with a parent, or childminder, or whatever. Well, those that don’t get a car or a taxi home.’

It’s true, of course. Ramzy and I are pretty much the only kids who walk home alone.

‘That told me something. And then when you started to quiz my builder that day? I figured, Hmm – curious kids. You see – you kids are all so darn protected these days. You don’t play out in the street, you get taken everywhere – everybody except for you. I’d see you on the beach with those dogs, and walking home on your own. And well … it turned out you were just what I needed. Also – you don’t wear glasses. Multi-sensory virtual reality requires near-perfect vision.’

‘So … that day on the beach, when we met?’ says Ramzy, suspiciously.

‘All kinda engineered. Well, apart from your dog eating my swim cap. That was a piece of luck.’

‘Your watch?’ I say.

‘Already scratched.’

‘Your wrist?’

She averts her eyes and even looks a bit embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’ She glances up and sees our shocked expressions. ‘Hey – don’t bail on me now. We’re so close.’

‘So close to what?’ I say. I can’t keep the impatience from my voice. Dr Pretorius narrows her eyes.

‘You’ll see. Trust me, kid. You’ll see. It’s nearly time for the Big Experiment.’

‘Today?’ says Ramzy, who’s still buzzing after shooting down an attack helicopter containing scary-looking aliens.

Dr Pretorius doesn’t answer directly. She just says, ‘Gimme a week, kiddos. One week. I’ll take you somewhere no one has ever been before.’ She unlocks the door that leads through to the Spanish City arcade and the tea rooms. I do a quick check for Sass Hennessey’s mum and am relieved that she isn’t there. She has seen me a few times, I’m pretty sure – and although she hasn’t said anything I still worry that she might.

Although, as it turns out, there are bigger things to worry about.

Because this is the week that everything goes wrong.

It is the week everybody learns about the plague.

First, though, I need to explain about St Woof’s.

The old parish church of St Wulfran and All Saints – known to everyone as St Woof’s – is a smallish church not far from the seafront, and old, with a short, fat steeple. Except it’s not a church any more – at least not one with a congregation, and a choir, and weddings and stuff. Now it’s just a building in the shape of a church. It’s got heavy wooden doors and, together with the thick sandstone walls, they do a good job of holding in the noise made by twenty-five dogs.

It is also my most favourite place in the whole world.

I first took Ramzy to St Woof’s at the start of last term. I wanted him to know what I’d been talking about (or, as he put it, ‘boring everyone senseless with’ – thanks, Ramz).

The first thing a newcomer notices about St Woof’s is the noise: the howling, the barking, the yapping and the snuffling. I love the noise almost as much as I love the second thing you notice – the smell. I was horrified to see that Ramzy had clapped a hand over his nose.

‘Oh, by goodness,’ he said through his pinched nose. ‘It stigs!’

‘You get used to it.’ I hardly even notice it any more, to be honest. Dogs do smell a bit, but they usually smell nice: sort of warm and woody. And – fun fact – their paws smell of popcorn. Honestly!

(I know their breath can be a bit fishy and I’m happy to admit that their poo really is foul, but then – sorry to say this – whose isn’t?)

Anyway, it was a Saturday morning, just before we start the weekly clean, when I turned up with Ramzy and that’s when St Woof’s smells the strongest.

‘Good morning, Georgie!’ said the vicar. I like the vicar: he’s quite old, probably seventy. He’s sort of lean with shaggy grey hair like an Irish wolfhound. That day he was wearing a huge, hand-knitted jumper and fingerless gloves. He sat at the long table just inside the door. ‘And who do we have here, perchance?’ he said when he saw Ramzy. He talks like that. You get used to it.

Without waiting for me to answer, Ramzy clicked his heels together and saluted. ‘Ramzy Rahman, at your service, sah!’

The vicar was a little taken aback, but then lots of people are when they first meet Ramzy. After a few seconds, though, he returned the salute and smiled.

‘Welcome aboard, Private Rahman! I suppose you’ve come to help, ah … Sergeant Santos?’ He removed his glasses and reached under his baggy sweater to extract an untucked shirt tail to polish them on. Ramzy nodded, enthusiastically.

‘Top-notch! Tickety-boo! Many hands make light work, eh?’ He replaced his glasses and peered at a worksheet on his desk. ‘You are on your usual station, Georgie. Clean first, brush afterwards, and remember …’ He held up a finger, his eyes looking humorous for a moment. We said it together:

‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord!’

‘Jolly good, Georgie. Off you go!’

Ramzy’s face was contorted in puzzlement as we walked away. ‘What the heck was that?’ he said, easily loud enough for the vicar to hear.

‘Shhh! No idea. It’s old Bible stuff. The vicar likes it. It’s kinda fun, and he …’

‘Wait. He’s a vicar?’

‘Used to be. He doesn’t wear the gear. Grab that bucket there. This was his church. Then I guess no one came any more so they turned it into St Woof’s and allowed him to stay on.’

Most of the old wooden church seats have gone. Instead, in the centre of the church is an indoor exercise pen covered in sawdust. Around the sides are all of the kennels. It’s pretty awesome.