'No,' said the voice of visitor number two. 'Our organization never waits. It gets things done at once.'

'Not here it doesn't,' said Mr Shields. 'This is Brentford.'

'Exactly!' said visitor number one. 'This is Brentford. Which is why we are here.'

'I've told you that I don't understand and I still don't.' Mr Shields was still keeping it fierce. The voices of his visitors were, however, calm.

'Do you know what data reaction is?' asked visitor number one.

'No,' said Mr Shields. 'And neither do I care.'

'It is what keeps our organization at the cutting edge of technology and everything else. Our mainframe scans the world for data. It assesses, it assimilates, it correlates, it sorts the wheat from the chaff and then it makes informed decisions.'

'Have you been sent by head office?' asked Mr Shields.

'Our organization owns head office,' said the voice of visitor number two. 'It owns the newspaper.'

'But you can't close it down. You can't touch it. I have a contract for life.'

'We have no wish to tamper with the way you run this newspaper. We have merely come to inform you of the organization's plans for the borough, so that you can play an active promotional role.'

Mr Shields made grumbling sounds.

'Data reaction,' said visitor number two. 'The mainframe received a sudden inrush of data from this borough, the evening before last, at precisely eight minutes past eight. Much of it was jumbled nonsense. But some of it was pertinent and of commercial value. Regarding something called Suburbia World Plc. Does this mean anything to you?'

'No,' said Mr Shields in a voice both fierce and puzzled.

'No-one has ever spoken to you about Suburbia World Plc?'

'No,' said Mr Shields. 'Never. What is it?'

'A theme park,' said visitor number one. 'It concerns turning the whole of Brentford into a suburban theme park.'

'What?' went Mr Shields.

'What?' went Derek.

'What?' went Kelly.

'Your week in Suburbia World Plc would not be complete without a boat trip to Brentford's own Fantasy Island.' Visitor number one spoke in a curious tone, as if he was a voice-over to a web site commercial. 'See the creature of myththat once inhabited this enchanted realm in the dream worlddays of the magic distant past. Take a safari through the wildlife sanctuary and rare bird reserve of Allotment World. You have to picture the images, sweeping aerial shots of the borough, taken from a helicopter. This will be big, very big.'

'But that's outrageous!' The voice of Mr Shields reached a level of fierceness beyond any as yet known to Derek.

'It is,' whispered Derek. 'It well and truly is.'

'Nevertheless,' said visitor number one, in a voice as calm as ever it had been. 'These concepts are now the property of our organization.'

'Hold on! Hold on!' The voice of Mr Shields was accompanied by the sounds of his chair being pushed back. 'You just stop right there. You said that your mainframe thingy received this information. That someone fed it into a computer somewhere.'

'It entered the databanks.'

'Then it is not your property. It's someone else's. Someone who could possibly be reasoned with.'

'What are you suggesting?' asked visitor number two.

'I don't know. But I know you can't do this. Brentonians won't stand for it. This isn't Disney World. This is a real place with real people in it.'

'That's what makes the concept so interesting. What invests it with such enormous commercial potential.'

'Get out of my office!' roared Mr Shields. 'Iconoclasts! Despoilers! Unclean spirits! Out demons out!'

'He's certainly loyal to the borough,' whispered Kelly.

'Mr Shields,' said visitor number two. 'We approached you because you are the editor of the borough's organ, as it were. Brentford is the only town in England, possibly the only town in all of the world that does not have its own official web site. Brentford appears to all but ignore the world that exists beyond its boundaries. It's an anachronism. It has enormous novelty value.'

There came crashing bashing sounds.

Derek said, 'I'd better get in there, before he goes completely berserk.'

'I think you should,' said Kelly.

Derek dashed off and Kelly continued to listen at the voice broadcaster attachment jobbie. She listened to the sounds of crashing and bashing. To the cries for mercy. To the further crashings and bashings. To the voice of Derek calling for reason. To further crashings and bashings and the voice of Derek calling for mercy also.

And then Kelly went in to sort things out.

Which left nobody in Derek's office to listen to the sounds that issued from the voice broadcaster attachment jobbie.

Which was probably all for the best, for those sounds were far from joyous.

Derek and Kelly watched as the ambulance drove away, joyfully ringing its bell.

'We'll be in trouble for this,' said Derek.

'We?' said Kelly.

'I mean you,' said Derek. 'You broke all the bones.'

'You should be grateful,' said Kelly. 'You could have been in that ambulance.'

'Along with Mr Shields and his two visitors. You were, how shall I put this, just a little harsh.'

'I was simply following the Dimac code,' said Kelly. 'It is not sufficient to defend yourself against an attacker. It is necessary that you punish them for their attack in the hope that they will think twice before making further attacks in the future.'

'You threw that man out of a first-floor window.'

'Pardon me, I kicked him out. The move is called the curl of the dark dragon's tail.'

'They were tough customers, though,' said Derek. 'That little one had me up off my feet with one hand. He was crushing my throat. Horrible. I hate violence.'

'So do I,' said Kelly. 'So do I.'

Derek gave her a sidelong glance. 'How odd,' said he. 'Because it really looked for all the world as if you were thoroughly enjoying yourself.’

'Looks can be deceptive.'

'In your case, certainly. So what are we going to do now? Mr Shields is out for the count once more…'

'I didn't hit him this time. I was defending him.'

'True. So what are we going to do?'

'Well,' said Kelly. 'I'm going to look through this.'

'And this is?'

Kelly held a wallet. 'Call it a trophy. I liberated it from the bigger visitor during the scuffle.'

'Shortly before you broke his leg.'

'He kicked me in the ankle.'

'Quite so. Let's have a look in this wallet then.'

'OK, but not here.'

In the Shrunken Head, at a table next to the Space Invaders machine, Kelly Anna Sirjan opened the wallet.

'A business card,' said Derek. 'Let's see.' And he read it. ' "Marcus Shadow. Project Development Associate. Cerean systems." Who or what is Cerean systems?'

'It's a division,' said Kelly. 'Of Mute Corp. But then isn't everything?'

'It's logical,' said Derek. 'I've heard of Data Reaction and if it does exist, Mute Corp would have it.'

'I didn't think that it did exist. I thought it was a Web Myth.'

'Well if it does, then it is about as near to artificial intelligence as anything is ever going to be,' said Derek.

'And basically it scans data, then makes its own evaluation of its commercial potential.'

'According to Web Myth, that's how old man Mute got rich. He invented it back in the 1990s to play the stock market. And the rest is history, as far as he's concerned. If the legend is fact.'

Kelly looked puzzled. 'And the Mute Corp mainframe had an inrush of potentially commercial information at eight minutes past eight the night before last.'

'Yes,' said Derek. 'And that rings a bell, for some reason.'