Read PopCo for Free Online Page A

board, and then, suddenly, my mind becomes intriguingly blank of any ideas about anything else at all. No toys. No useful thoughts. Nothing. My inner 9- to 12-year-old child has gone off in a sulk. This is all too grown up for it. I yawn. And, although I have tried to avoid it, my internal scene shrinks to a repeated whisper, and a hazy fade-out takes me into sleep, propped up on my bed, still vaguely waiting for the enemy.

Chapter Four
    Although I have many anxious dreams about sleeping through lunch (after arriving here, so conspicuously, four hours early, that would surely be the last straw), I am awake, washed and changed by half-past twelve. One of the miscellaneous objects I have with me is a small inflatable bag with suction pads attached to it. This was a prototype for a product that was never made, which was due to be called Hide It! or something else with an exclamation mark. (We’ve gone a bit exclamation mark crazy recently, I think because of some ironic, or even post-ironic, Japanese connection.) The idea with this product is that you put things in it, squeeze out all the air, then use the suction pads to stick it somewhere secret, where the enemy won’t see it. It failed product testing because if you put too much stuff in it the suction pads don’t work. It’s a shamebecause initial focus groups loved it. The bags were originally going to be included with my KidTec, KidSpy and KidCracker kits, each one decorated accordingly with different types of camouflage, but the one I still have is just a see-through prototype. I put my credit card and a couple of other important things in it and stick it to the underside of the wooden cabinet. If it turns out that I really am staying in a dormitory with other people I may have to take other measures, but this will do for now.
    I have no idea where lunch is. Maybe in the main building, the one Mac described as having some kind of ‘grandeur’. I decide to go there to find out. As soon as I leave the barn I run into a bunch of people arriving with bags and cases. The mist has gone and it’s not quiet any more. You wouldn’t be able to hear the soft, breathless sound of the Kid Lab games now, what with all the extra sounds of people talking, coughing, arriving in taxis. I don’t know any of the people who are walking towards me.
    As well as involving the whole of the Battersea ID team, many of whom I only know to say ‘hello’ to, the POW event aims to bring together unique teams from other parts of the UK (like the videogame creatives, I suppose, although I don’t really know) and the English-speaking ID teams from Iceland and Spain. I learnt this last week from an ‘All Departments’ e-mail forwarded to me at home. The group walking towards the barn are, at a guess, from Iceland. One girl in the group has pink hair, tied up in pigtails. She’s wearing an obscure indie band T-shirt and a studded choker. Her rucksack has badges stuck on it, and various candy-coloured objects dangling from it: key rings, ribbons, a small soft-looking monkey toy. Just as she is about to make eye-contact, I spy Dan walking behind them, gesturing at me. A couple more hand gestures later, we are fleeing in the opposite direction.
    ‘Where’s your bag?’ I say to Dan, once we are halfway up the hill behind the barn.
    ‘In my room,’ he says. ‘I came to find you. You were on a list.’
    ‘Why are we running away?’
    ‘Escape is the only option,’ he says.
    Among a few other things, Dan and I share a love of military strategy and commando films. For me, it started with all the war stories my grandfather told me when I was growing up. For Dan, I’m not sure. At work, when we’ve had enough, we say things like,‘Escape is the only option’, or ‘Eject’, and so on. We’re not having sex, despite what people sometimes think. We once spent a whole night watching free porn just after Dan got cable TV but when I tried to get into bed with him afterwards he told me he was