Bang Read Online Free PDF Page A

the final
piece,’ explained JJ Jeffrey. Of course there will be onlookers, as you would
expect, during the making, whose reviews will be considered unreliable. We’ll
film the whole thing in here. This will be our studio. But I am wasting my
breath, you know all this from the script. Stop looking at my egg. It’s mine,
eyes off! Now, scene one we’ll get going with in about ten or twenty seconds
time, I can’t be any more specific than that.’
    Delilah could not take her eyes off the fried egg or
the old-fashioned cup of tea and its contemporary pot. Wrapped shivering in the
towel – which she’d been told had been sown back together by prisoners in
the System – all she could think of was water. But there was no water.
This cup of tea and on the plate the runny yellow egg were all there were, and
they came a close second to water.
    ‘Disinformation is an exact science,’ the officer went
on. ‘Get it wrong and Society finds itself in all sorts bother. Society, if you
ask me, should stop complaining so much and get on with what’s provided it. You
give society a name like, er, Society, and in no time at all Society has become
a playground for the ungrateful. Who puts a roof over Society’s heads does
Society think? No, no, it’s given them on a plate, the whole shebang. Where was
I? That’s right. And it produces the likes of you.’
    ‘Delilah made a move for the egg.
    ‘No, it’s mine. My egg I say!’
    Delilah grabbed the egg from the plate.
    ‘Take that!’ Officer JJ Jeffery stabbed his fork at
Delilah’s fingernail-less finger. She gulped – and grabbed his cup of tea,
risking all the floors the System had to offer for a drink of something, not
that she would have, had she known.
    ‘And this is what Society gives back. This!’ The
officer turned to the camera and held out both hands, giving it Delilah. ‘Hold
her hand down. Here, help me, you morons. Over here.’ Some assistants rushed
along. ‘Bring in the prop fork. Here, give it here. What are you waiting for?
Not to him, me . What would he do with the prop fork, you idle fool, he
is the only the grip. Do I have to do everything myself? If I must. Oh if I
must.’ Officer JJ Jeffrey yanked the prop fork out of the assistant’s hand and
attached it to Delilah’s finger – a fork designed to look like a fork
stabbed into her finger but actually a fork attached by a ring of
blood-disguised metal, which the officer clamped very tightly, so that when
Delilah tried removing it she only caused her finger great pain, and she
quickly realised she was stuck with the prop fork on the end of her maltreated
finger for the foreseeable future. But she’d managed to steal some tea and that
was the important thing, and other than the fork abuse had suffered no direct
consequences yet.
    The officer clarified what the film was about. ‘As you
know from the script, the first scene is about a girl who has had her Life
stolen on the way up an escalator. By a mugger, we thought. Do you think you
can manage that?’
    ‘Of course I can manage that.’ Delilah held out her
hands, and popped her eyes in disbelief. ‘That is exactly what happened to me.’
    ‘Do not lie, idiot girl. This could never really
happen. This is disinformation. My word, we were up for days, my colleagues and
I, nights, thinking up an example that could never happen but we could use for
our little film. How else could we frighten the populous, or should I say
Society, into behaving? Upstairs has been onto me for months about it. And the
Center of Disinformation onto them in turn. And what did we do? We magicked it
out thin air. Just like that. Happened to you indeed!’
    ‘But officer, I am not lying,’ said Delilah, not ready
to give up yet.
    ‘Pah. It’s no wonder that you’ve spent time in the
System, with such an imagination. You just say your lines, girlie. Get them
wrong and each time you do, you’ll get a floor. Is this understood? I certainly
hope so, for all our