Now it doesn’t take long to explain about the Web, and the average person can grasp all the essentials and gain a good working knowledge in less than a lifespan. Soap listened patiently for at least five minutes.

“So I just touch any key,” he said.

“Yes,” said the clerk and departed.

And so Soap Distant, voyager to the realms belooooow, became a surfer of the Web. The Web, the Web, the wonderful Web, from which all knowledge flows.

It’s all there on the Web, you know. The whole wide world and then some.

Of course, you do have to know where to look.

Soap had no idea, but he got straight down to the action.

He typed in QUEEN ELIZABETH II and was quite amazed by what flashed up before him. And then he typed in ASSASSINATION OF.

And then he sat right back and stared.

According to the Web, Queen Elizabeth had been shot dead while on stage during a Beatles concert at Wembley Stadium in nineteen eighty.

“A Beatles concert in nineteen eighty?” Soap called up THE BEATLES.

And according to the Web it was true. The Beatles had played Wembley in nineteen eighty. The show had been organized by John Lennon, who had apparently become something of a royalist after receiving a visit from Prince Charles while he lay in hospital recovering from the shooting incident.

“Shooting incident?” said Soap. “But Lennon should be dead.”

Soap called up JOHN LENNON: SHOOTING and learned to his amazement how the great one’s life had been saved by a mystery man who never came forward to claim the fortune Lennon offered him. All that was known of the mystery man was that he wore a black T-shirt and shorts.

“Oh ho,” said Soap. “Oh ho.”

But as “oh ho” didn’t help a lot, Soap continued his search.

He backtracked to the Wembley gig and boggled at the list of support bands. Not only had The Doors played there. But also the Jimi Hendrix Experience. And Janis Joplin.

“Methinks I see a pattern here,” said Soap.

“Would you please keep the noise down,” said the clerk, poking a clerkish head around the door.

“I’m sorry,” said Soap. “But could you help me here?”

The clerk sighed and plodded over. “What is the trouble now? I do have things to be doing.”

“All the bands listed here,” said Soap. “They all really played at Wembley in nineteen eighty, did they?”

The clerk perused the list. “Yes. It was a legendary gig. The video of that gig has outsold any other.”

“Really?” said Soap. “And this would be a Virgin video, would it?”

“What other make of video is there?” asked the clerk.

“Just checking,” said Soap. “Now go away, please.”

“Well, really!” said the clerk and went away.

Soap surfed the Web until lunchtime. It was all action stuff. Well, at least it was sometimes. Well, perhaps it wasn’t really, to be honest. No, in fact, actually, it wasn’t all action at all. It was just sitting at a TV screen and typing at a keyboard, and although there are ways of putting a spin on that kind of thing and making it sound really interesting—

IT ISN’T!

IT’S CRAP!!!

GET A LIFE!!!!!!!

By lunchtime Soap had had his fill of the Web. He had learned from it all he could learn from it. This hadn’t been all that he’d wanted to learn, but he had learned the Web’s evil secret.

And the evil secret of the Web is this, my friends.

That all you can ever learn

from The Web is what the

people who put the stuff onto

it want you to learn.

“Right,” said Soap. “Well, that’s quite enough of that. Time for a bit of action, I think.”

And right on cue (for there is no other way) came that good old police loudhailer voice.

“John Omally,” it called. “John Omally, this is the Virgin Police Service. We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands held high.”

“Oh,” said Soap, to no one but himself. “John Omally, what?”

“You have been positively identified from a frame of surveillance footage as the man aiding Soap Distant to assist a wanted criminal in his escape from justice. To whit, one David Carson, also known as the Cannibal Chef and Brentford’s Most Wanted Man.”

“Oh,” said Soap once again to himself. “But how?”

“In case you’re wondering how we know you’re in there, our police crime computer is linked into every other national computer and it has just registered your library ticket being fed into the Memorial Library system for renewal.”

“Some of a gun,” mumbled Soap. “That’s clever.”

“Well, actually,” the loudhailer voice continued, “in case you were thinking how clever that was, I have to own up that it’s not how we tracked you down. You see, the clerk at the library desk just telephoned us to say that you have a library book outstanding on your card. How to Play the Stratocaster. And you should have returned it fifteen years ago. There’s a two-thousand-pound fine to pay.”

“It never rains but it pours,” said Soap in a philosophical tone.

“So come on out now, or we’ll come in and get you.”

“Very tricky,” said Soap.

“And get a move on,” called the voice. “We want to have our lunch.”

“Righty-right.” The man from belooow considered his options. He could try and bluff his way out. Say that he wasn’t John Omally but had just popped into the library to renew John’s ticket for him. Soap shook his head at that. It lacked the action he sorely craved. Some other way out, then.

Soap looked up and all round and about. There was only the one door into the reference section and this led from the vestibule and the front entrance. Outside which, the police were no doubt waiting.

But there was also the window. And he was on the ground floor this time. Soap considered the window. It was a most splendid window. A stained-glass window, bequeathed to the borough by its most famous son, the author P.P. Penrose. It featured scenes from the adventures of Lazlo Woodbine, the most popular fictional detective of the twentieth century, the creation of P.P. Penrose.

Soap considered the window some more. How would Lazlo have got out of this? He would have pulled off some ingenious stunt. But a stunt that had plenty of action.

Soap squared up before the window. “Time for action,” he said.

The police gave Soap five minutes and then they rushed the building. They burst into the vestibule with big guns drawn, visors down and tear gas at the ready.

The clerk at the desk looked up at them. “He’s in the reference section,” said the clerk. “Lying face down on the floor, unconscious.”

“Unconscious?” said a constable, a-cocking his big gun.

“He tried to jump through the window. But it’s made of vandal-proof Plexiglas. He knocked himself unconscious.”

The constables chuckled as constables do and went in to pick up the body.

“Not that door,” said the clerk. “It’s the other one.”

The police went in through the other one and the clerk went off for lunch.

The clerk was several streets away before he stopped walking and started to laugh.

“I’m sorry I had to do that,” said Soap Distant, for the clerk was he. “But if I hadn’t bopped you on the head and changed clothes, I might really have had to jump through that stained-glass window.”

And Soap Distant went off on his way, secure at least in the knowledge that P.P. Penrose was not turning in his grave for the loss of his window. The great writer would surely also have admired Soap’s cunning escape. For although it lacked for action, it certainly was ingenious.

Ooooooooooooooooooh …