Dead Pixels

MOBILE PHONE RINGS Sorry, I've got to get that.

Hello? The castle's on fire.

Which castle? Blackfinger, Meg! Blackfinger is on fire!

OK, man the defences, catapults, arches, fill the meadow hall with some quicklime.

No, Meg! You need to get online right now!

Well, I can't right now because I'm at badminton.

You're at badminton? The racket sport of badminton?

Yes, Nicky, because Alison set me up on a date with a man called Dale

and I am this close. Seriously, I can sniff dicks.

I see. Well, while you're up to your gills

in dicks and pubes and scrota,

we are under siege.

It's those kids from South Korea. They're back.

Nicky, this is my first night off in two months.

And which do you think is more important, Meg,

a game of badminton or a fucking castle?

Blackfinger and everything it offers us strategically.

Argh!

Meg, is everything all right? Yes, it's fine, thank you, Alison.

It's not fine though, is it, Meg? What am I supposed to tell them?

Tell them your fucking castle's on fire!

I not saying those words.

They're stealing all our stuff, Meg, our weapons, our gold.

We'll have to grind, grind it all back.

No, I'm going. Bye, Nicky.

Right, let's play. Oh!

I'm really sorry. That was my mum, erm...

There's been a fire and... Sorry, your mum's on fire?

No, she's not! We don't think so.

I'm really sorry.

It's a fire.

Obviously, that's ruined, Dale.

That's another whole area of town that I can't set foot in ever again,

because I really quite strongly implied that my mum burned to death.

This is what happens out there. You're essentially Icarus

and you flew too close to the sun

with your wings made from badminton rackets.

Might as well just face it, my vagina is like a rare Penny Black.

It is never getting licked.

Well, the best thing you can do now is just grind.

Grind it out, Meg. Succumb unto the grind.

They are moreish.

The sensation of clubbing brown bears is...

It's just moreish! You're loving this, aren't you?

This is basically your favourite bit, the drudgery,

hitting animals with cudgels.

So sorry, Meg. It's just hard to hear you over the deafening screams

of all these bears.

Popsicle Mybutt reporting for business. What's happening?

Usman, where were you last night? I was skyping you.

I bet. My wife's out of town so I'm in charge of childcare.

Well, while you were in charge of childcare and Meg

was at badminton, I got fucked to death by Korean super-children.

We lost Blackfinger. Oh, Jesus Christ, no!

Not again! Daddy, can you do my eye drops?

Not now, honey. Daddy's busy! So now what do we do?

Same as always, we grind until we've got the gold

to buy it back.

You know, whenever we do this, I always think of Paddington!

Computer, phone. Phone comes with, does it?

OK, nobody panic, but there's a new guy in the office.

He's here right now. He's like ten metres away and he is hot as balls.

Oh, boys, I am feeling a stirring in the nubbin.

Oh, geez, not the nubbin.

I'm telling you, my female gonad has awakened from its slumbers.

Wow, that was a quick slumber, wasn't it?

OK, he just smiled at me. It's on.

I just licked my lips. You licked your lips?

I was looking right at him and I licked my lips.

Sound good? It depends. It either makes you look horny or like a cannibal.

Small lick is fine, large lick is insane.

That would make you look insane. I'm fine then.

Clearly blown it.

So... Oh, right, he's coming over. It's back on. It's back on.

Oh, sweet Minamoto. Hi, Russell. I'm the new guy.

Just thought I should come and say hi. Eh, Meg, Megan.

But you can call me Meg or Megan. Preferably Meg.

No-one calls me Megan. My nan - she died, Halloween.

Unrelated. It's not like someone scared her to death.

Pneumonia. Which I've always thought is ironic,

cos it kills off so many old people, but they should call it...

..oldmonia.

Whatever you do, do not lick your lips.

So, yeah, it's the first day. I'm just like, where is everything?

I couldn't find the kettle.

I mean it, Meg, no licking of lips.

So I bought a coffee from the machine, but it swallowed my money,

and now I'm getting quite thirsty.

Don't lick them, Meg! Hold your tongue!

There's actually a bigger kitchen just through that way.

Are you playing a bloody game on there?!

On my lunch break, I'm playing it on my lunch break!

It's got fucking dragons in it! It has wyverns, yeah. It's Kingdom Scrolls.

It's basically Final Fantasy online for people who aren't pompous fuckheads.

Can I have a quick wazz? I'd rather you didn't!

Wazz! It's just basically like me coming round to your house

and asking to use your toothbrush. Just... Ah, urgh!

Yeah, no, sure.

You could create your own character.

Can I be a dragon? You can be a spider rider,

riding a spider. Oh! Yeah, I'd bloody love to ride a bloody spider!

I'll send you a link.

Cool, I'll see you on there.

Boys, I have a date. You have a date?

What, like an American woman in an American film, like Meg Ryan

in You've Got An E-mail? Right, you keep grinding.

I'm hitting the bogs, because I'm in the mood

for some rubbin' of the nubbin.

Maybe I could take him up to the top of Greycloud,

show him the view out over the Twisted Heath.

I tell you where's romantic, the Lake of Corpses.

I'm not taking him there! Nicky, I want this guy to stomp me.

I want him to demolish my entire downtown area.

I want him to gentrify me.

Shit!

Oh, no, he's doing it again. Who?

The man, with the sponge and thing!

He's like two feet away. He's cleaning my window.

Oh, God, he's judging me so hard right now.

The withered man at his keyboard.

The meat lump on a swivel chair. This is absolutely intolerable.

Just pull the curtain then. I can't, he'll see.

Maybe if I do it...

..really slowly?

Nice and gently.

Just going to ease the curtain over.

Easy does it.

OK, he's staring at me. Too late.

Nearly over now!

And it's done. I've successfully closed the curtains

on my feelings of inadequacy.

So here's the thing they never tell you about childcare -

it's fucking easy. Oh, yeah?

It's essentially the easiest thing I've ever done.

I've got one doing homework and one in the playpen.

Wait, she's there with you now? It's OK. She can't see the screen.

She's in her cot with the bars and the lid.

What lid? I made a lid for the cot out of some plywood.

It's for her own safety, just to stop her climbing out.

She's a climber, that one! BABY LAUGHS

She's in a cot with a lid?!

She's basically in a cage! It's not a cage.

Does sound quite cagey. OK, can we stop calling it a cage?

It's a playpen with a lid. Daddy, I can't see my homework.

My eyes are all itchy.

Two seconds, honey. Just keep blinking.

Hello, giant green slag.

Chatting, right.

Can we help you, love?

Meg, it's me, Russell from work.

Oh!

You made a woman! You're a massive woman!

I know! I'm a massive woman.

I'm basically the biggest possible woman.

I love this game!

Quack, quack, quack, I'm a giant running woman!

Oh, boy, we have a casual among us.

Wait, my mouth's moving when I speak. Amazing!

How does it do that? How does it know what I'm going to say?

It doesn't. No, it does. Look... Look at me.

I'm talking. I'm talking.

I'm talking, I'm talking!

I'm talking, I'm talking!

I'm talking! I'm talking!

I'm talking! It's just flaps.

The mouth just flaps regardless.

Because I can say, "I'd like a ham bagel", or I can say,

"I'm dying of throat cancer", and it's exactly the same.

Look at the sun!

Look at the other sun!

Look at the plants!

Look at that plant!

Mushrooms? It's got bloody mushrooms in it!

Oh, my God. If you sheath your weapon and unsheathe it again, it looks like wanking.

Ha-ha!

Oh, brother, another genius who discovers wanking hands

and thinks he's Thomas Edison.

Er, actually, could you just stop doing that?

We just tend to take a very dim view on it as a community.

So what are we doing? Long view.

The citadel's fallen into the hands of the Red Scorn and their leader,

the Hive Mother, has banished all dissident factions,

so that's your hunchbacks, that's your humans,

that's your Amazonians, to the outer rim,

where we've formed into a rebel alliance known as the J-Knot,

headed up by a charismatic but itinerant barbarian

by the name of Tannadal Quan.

But now the Hive Mother's on the throne, so politically, the Night Kingdom is just roiling.

It's a powderkeg. It's just...

..roiling!

So what we doing? We're grinding.

We're repetitiously slaying low-level brown bears in exchange

for very small amounts of gold.

It's essentially factory work. Why are we doing that?

To buy our castle back. Also, when I have crucifixion experience points,

XP, I'll level up, and there'll be a little red banner on screen

and a tinging sound, and it'll trigger a tiny dopamine rush

in the mesolimbic pathway of my frontal lobes and,

for that second, I will momentarily forget about death.

Quack, quack, quack, I'm a giant wanking woman!