Scor­pio News

“We ?”, this is getting sillier, did that mean there’s more of them somewhere. I could see nothing. It was dark all round, just a circle of light, and the insect on the floor. Parallel ridges ran across the floor into the darkness. Desperately I tried to think how I got into this situation.

“Sure, there’s lots of us in the organisation. Do you want to meet a few us ?” There was a shuffling in the shadows all round. The sound of hundreds of small feet. An absurd thought occurred, if they all have sixteen legs and each leg has a boot on the end, there must be a lot of work for the cobblers around here.

“Cobblers to you to mate. Do you want to meet us or not ?”

“Ok, I suppose it can’t do any harm. Do you all have names – numbers, I mean ?”

“Well, some of us have a few letters thrown in as well. Take this one for instance.” The shuffling grew louder, and a larger insect came into the light. I counted, 40 legs in all, and again the little black boots. Why the boots ? “He calls himself Z80.”, and then in a whisper, “He thinks he’s the boss round here. But he’d be no good without me and my mates. He’s getting on a bit as well.”

“How do you do ?”, the cultured Californian voice said, “I’m Z80, I’m unique. I see you’ve been talking to my small friend here.” It looked down on 4116, and with a shuffling of the legs, several boots landed under 4116 and swiftly kicked him out of the light. “Please excuse these underlings, I’d have been here to greet you myself had I not had an enemeye in progress at the time.”

“An enemy ?” I asked.

“No, an enemeye, you know, a fella’s got to do what a fella’s gotta do. No interrupting an enemeye, but then you should know that.”

“I should ?” Again the feeling of ‘deja vu’. Why should I know what an enemeye is. Somewhere in the back of my mind enemeye seemed to mean something – but what ?

“Never mind” said Z80, dismissing the subject, “As you may be aware, I’m the organiser around here. I keep the others in order and tell them what to do. They all seem to think it’s easy, but dolling out instructions at about 300,000 a second really puts a strain on one’s silicon, if you know what I mean.”

“No I don’t, where the hell am I ?”

“You really don’t know ?” asked Z80, sounding pained with muted surprise, “I would have thought it was all too obvious.”