Dreams always felt real.

He turned his attention to the thing by the controlchair. It had a nozzle which filled a paper cup withsomething like thin vegetable soup, and a slot whichpushed out very large plastic bags containing very smallthings like sandwiches. The bags had to be big to getall the list of additives on. They contained absolutelyeverything necessary to keep a star warrior healthy.Not happy, but healthy

He'd taken one mouthful when something slammedinto the ship. A red glare filled the cabin; alarms startedto blare.

He looked up in time to see a ship curving away foranother run.

He hadn't even glanced at the radar.

He'd been eating his tea!

He spun the ship. The multi-vitamin sandwich flewaround into the wiring somewhere.

It was coming back to get him. He prodded furiouslyat the control panel.

Hang on ...

What was the worst that could happen to him?

He could wake up in bed.

He took his time. He dodged. He weaved. Anothermissile hit the ship. As the attacker roared past, Johnnyfired, with everything.

Another cloud of wreckage.

No problem.

But it must have fired a missile just before he got it.There was another red flash. The lights went out. Theship jumped. His head bounced off the seatback andbanged on to the control panel.

He opened his eyes.

Right. And you wake up back in your bedroom.

A light winked at him.

There was something beeping.

Bound to be the alarm clock. That's how dreamsend

He lifted his head. The flashing light was oblong. Hetried to focus.

There were shapes there.

But they weren't saying 6:3=.

They were spelling out 'AIR LEAK', and behind theinsistent beeping was a terrible hissing sound.

No, no, he thought. This doesn't happen.

He pushed himself up. There were lots of red lights.He pressed some buttons hurriedly, but this had noeffect at all except to make some more lights gored.

He didn't know much about the controls of a star-ship, other than fast, slow, left, right and fire, but therewere whole rows of flashing alarms which suggestedthat a lot of things he didn't know about were goingwrong. He stared at some red letters which said'SECONDARY PUMPS FAILURE'. He didn't knowwhat the secondary pumps were, either, but he wished,he really wished, they hadn't failed.

His head ached. He reached up, and there was realblood on his hand. And he knew that he was going todie. Really die.No, he thought. Please! I'm John Maxwell. Please!I'm twelve. I'm not dying in a spaceshipThe beeping got louder.He looked at the sign again.It was flashing 6:3=About time, he thought, as he passed out . .

And woke up.

He was at the computer again. It wasn't switched on,and he was freezing cold.

He had a headache, but a tentative feel said there wasno blood. It was just a headache.

He stared into the dark black screen, and wonderedwhat it felt like to be a ScreeWee.

It felt like that, except that you didn't wake up. Itwas always AIR LEAK, or *Alert*Alert*Alert* beep-ing on and off, and then perhaps the freezing cold ofspace, and then nothing.

He had breakfast.

You got a free alien in every pack of sugar-glazedSnappiflakes. It was a new thing. Or an old thing,being tried again.

The one that ended up in his bowl was orange andhad three eyes and four arms. And it was holding a raygun in each hand.

His father hadn't got up. His mother was watchingthe little television in the kitchen, where a very largeman disguised as an entire desert was pointing to a lotof red and blue arrows on a map.

He went down to Neil Armstrong Mall.

He took the plastic alien with him. That'd be the wayto invade a planet. One alien in every box! Wait untilthey were in every cupboard in the country, send outthe signal and bazaam!

Cereal killers!

Maybe on some other planet somewhere you got afree human in every packet of ammonia-coated Snappi-crystals. Hey, zorks! Collect the Whole Set! Andthere'd be all these little plastic people. Holding guns,of course. You just had to walk down the Street to seethat, of course, everyone had a gun.

He looked out of the bus window.

That was it, really. No-one would bother to putplastic aliens inside the plastic cereal if they were just,you know, doing everyday things. Holding theCosmiczippo RayTM hedge clippers! Getting on theMegadeathTM bus! Hanging out at the Star ThrusterMall!

The trouble with all the aliens he'd seen was that theyeither wanted to eat you or play music at you until youbecame better people. You never got the sort that justwanted to do something ordinary like borrow the lawnmower.

Wobbler and Yo-less and Bigmac were trying tohang out by the ornamental fountain, but really theywere just hanging around. Yo-less was wearing thesame grey trousers he wore to school. You couldn'thang out in grey trousers. And Wobbler still wore hissunglasses, except they weren't real sunglasses becausehe had to wear ordinary glasses anyway; they were thoseclip-on sunglasses for tourists. Also, they weren't thesame size as the glasses underneath, and had rubbed redmarks on his nose. And he wore an anorak. Wobblerwas probably the only person in the universe who stillwore an anorak. And Bigmac. in addition to his camou-flage trousers and 'Terminator' T-shirt with 'BlackburySkins' on the back in biro, had got hold of a belt madeentirely of cartridge cases. He looked stupid.

'Yo, duds,' said Johnny.

'We've been here ages,' said Yo-less.

'I went one stop past on the bus and had to walkback,' said Johnny. 'Thinking about other things.What's happening?'

'Do you mean what's happening, or sort of hey, myman, what's happening?' said Wobbler.

'What's happening?' said Johnny.

'I want to go into J&J Software,' said Wobbler.'They might have got Cosmic Coffee Mats in. It got areview in Bazzammm! and they said it's got an unbreak-able copy protection.''Did they say it was any good?' said Bigmac.'Who cares?''You'll get caught one day,' said Yo-less.'Then you get given a job in Silicon Valley, designingantipiracy software,' said Wobbler. Behind his twothicknesses of glasses, his eyes lit up. Wobbler thoughtthat California was where good people went when theydied.

'No, you don't. You just get in trouble and you getsued,' said Yo-less. 'And the police take all your com-puters away. There was something in the paper.'

They wandered aimlessly towards the computershop.

'I saw this film once, right, where there were thesecomputer games and if you were really good the alienscame and got you and you had to fly a spaceship andfight a whole bad alien fleet,' said Bigmac.

'Did you beat it? I mean, in the film, the alien fleetgot beaten?'

Bigmac gave Johnny an odd look.'Of course. Sure. There wouldn't be any point other-wise, would there.''Only you can save mankind,' said Johnny.'What?''It's the game,' said Wobbler.

'But it always says something like that on the boxesyou get games in,' said Johnny. Except if you get themfrom Wobbler, he added to himself, when you just geta disc.'Well. Yeah. Something like that. Why not?'

'I mean they never say, "Only You are going to beput inside a Billion Pounds Worth of Machine withmore Switches than you've Ever Seen and be Blown toBits by a Thousand Skilled Enemy Pilots because YouDon't Really Know how to Fly It."They wandered past Mr Zippy's Ice CreamExtravaganza.'Can't see that catching on,' said Wobbler. 'Can't seethem ever selling a game called Get Shot to Pieces.'

'You still having trouble at home?' said Yo-less.

'It's all gone quiet,' said Johnny.

'That can be worse than shouting.'

'Yes.'

'It's not that bad when your mum and dad split up,'said Wobbler, 'although you get to see more museumsthan is good for you.'