Dead Pixels

Meg?

Alison?

Anybody home? Anybody home?

Nicky?

KNOCKS ON DOOR

Nicky, were you calling me?

Did you need me?

Nicky?

Oh, my God. Oh, Jesus Christ, no.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. Shit, shit, shit!

Nicky! Nicky! Please, Nicky!

Oh, my God. Nicky!

Oh, my God. Nicky! Nicky! Nicky!

Nicky! Alison? Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. What the fuck? Alison!

It's stuck! It's stuck! Agh!

HORSE SQUEALS

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't look at me! INDISTINCT WAILING

I'm sorry!

Meg! You're late.

Yeah, because guess what, they fucking promoted me.

Again?! I know! The fuckers.

I've got a team, a pension, some poor prick has to get me coffee.

It's a fucking shit show. Meg, that is amazing.

Oh, yeah. It sure is, Alison.

Maybe I'll just get myself a leather bag

so I can put my laptop in it with a banana. Hm?

PHONE RINGS

Oh, oh. Here we go! Here we go. Work phone.

What?

Yes. Bye.

Colleagues love a fucking chat, don't they?

PHONE CHIMES

Oh, wh-wh-what the fuck is this now? Mm?

Oh, it's Greg on the fuck phone. Seriously. How is he? Greg?

We had sex, Alison, and it was amazing. Oh, my God. Meg.

Only slight shitter is now I want to do it with him all the time.

It's like when a lion eats a child

and suddenly it's got a taste for human flesh

so they have to plant drugs in a burger

and blow its fucking brains out with a handgun.

DOOR OPENS

CLEARS THROAT Nicky.

Alison.

Since you're both here, you can give me a hand.

I'm doing a big clean. Glass of vino, blitz the absolute tits

out of the kitchen. Hold that thought, Alison.

Indefinitely. Mega patch going live in two.

And what the fuck is mega patch, please?

They've released an update for Kingdom Scrolls

and it is going to fix everything that is wrong

with the expansion pack.

Hail to the mega patch! Hail to the mega patch!

Just to say...

..you may have heard what sounded like whinnying

coming from my computer earlier...

I don't want to know. OK, cos it was actually an erotic dynasty warriors

scenario with horses present, but they were very much onlookers.

OK?

Just to be clear, no horses were fucked in the making of that video.

It just...

Between you and me, everything that happened with Daisy

in that cave...

I've been awakened, Alison.

Well, that's good then, isn't it? MICROWAVE DINGS

BLOWS NOSE LOUDLY

Just feels nice.

Usman, my brother, you ready to get mega patched?

Meg, I was born ready.

I was actually born prematurely, that's how ready I was.

I was so ready, I came out three months early and almost died.

God, I need this because this is my window.

This is my one night off of work and Greg..

COMPUTER CHIMES ..and oh, oh!

What the red-hot cinnamon shit cakes? 335 fucking mins?

Oh, my God. I've got the same mins. That is insane!

That is an insane quantity of mins!

It's a super-abundance of mins.

I'm drowning in a glut of mins!

Guys, my download is only 17 mins.

What the fuck? Sorry.

I'm actually staring down the barrel

of a very reasonable portion of mins.

Where are you? How are you getting connection speeds like that?

I'm on a relaxing vacation with my wife.

I'm being facetious, obviously.

I had a four-day layover in Seoul, so I'm taking a mini-break

from the relentless grind of family life.

And these are pretty much optimum gaming conditions.

Dark, quiet.

It's like being inside a womb.

Like a very high-tech, interactive 4K womb.

And that is my kind of womb.

It's gone up a min! How has it gone up a min?

Those min-hoarding fucks.

Sounds to me like maybe you got a Wi-Fi leak in the house.

Bandwidth emergency. Shut down your devices immediately.

What are you doing? Putting an end to this gluttonous intake

of our precious megabytes.

Look at this! IPad just streaming a shit video to no-one.

That's the news. There's been a landslide.

Ooh, a landslide!

Meg, what are you doing?

I'm unplugging the smart fridge. It's not a smart fridge, Meg.

Alison, I eat the yogurts. The yogurts come back.

It's a fucking smart fridge.

Those are my yogurts, Meg. I buy new yogurts

because you eat my old yogurts.

Nicky, speed check! It's barely moved the needle.

Fuck! Well, what now? I don't know, I guess we just have to sit here

and wait. What?! For 330 mins?

What are we supposed to do? I could read a fucking novel.

I won't, but I could.

Curse you, dual link router, and your absurdly low ping rates.

God, I hate you sometimes.

Don't deserve those firmware upgrades.

Right. Well, if you're doing nothing, you could come

and help me with the freezer. I'm defrosting it.

Oh, defrosting the freezer?

That is so you, Alison. Doesn't even make sense as a sentence.

"Defrosting the freezer." What's next?

Detoasting the toaster, huh?

Actually, it really needs doing because somebody tried to freeze

a half gallon milk container filled with what appears to be liquidised

Peking duck, and then wrote "Cantonese smoothie" on the side,

and then left the door open.

So now the whole thing's basically frozen solid.

Alison, I'm not just going to help you, OK? Why should I?

There's absolutely no incentive for me.

Right. What if I rewarded you with imaginary XP?

Then obviously my response would be,

"How much imaginary XP?"

Oh, oh, loads, millions.

Well, no, that's not realistic, is it? A million XP?

That'd be like being crowned Emperor of Japan.

This is 6,000, 7,000 max.

Yeah. OK, yeah. Yeah.

6,000 XPs.

Plus a big bowl of home-made chilli.

Meg, Meg, come on. It could be a laugh.

The three of us hanging out.

All right. Fuck it.

I'm in but only because I've got nowhere better to be

for the next 900 million mins.

Great. I'll start on the cooker.

SCRAPING

It's been incredibly well-balanced, the experience of defrosting

this freezer, because drawer one - or level one - that was just an

ice cube tray and a couple of stray Magnums,

but that just introduced the core mechanic. And then, boom!

Level two!

The mid-level boss - a large, frozen chicken

welded to a garlic baguette.

This...this is my sword in the stone.

289 mins remaining. Ughh!

PHONE RINGS

Oh, oh! And what's this now? Oh, it's the work phone. Again.

Seriously, am I the only dipshit around here

who knows how to run a design agency?

What?

Well, shrink the logo, slap a gradient on it

and then drop in a stock shot of a diverse family

and shaft them for 795 quid plus VAT.

Goodbye!

Oh, my God, Meg. That was actually really impressive.

Yes, I know. I'm brilliant at it. It's a fucking nightmare.

We should celebrate your promotion.

Because I'm celebrating, too, actually.

Oh, yeah? Celebrating what?

Jay and Kerry have had a massive row.

I mean, an absolute toxic horror show right in the middle

of Debenhams, of all fucking places. I mean, talk about symbolism.

A dying marriage in a dying department store.

Obviously terrible for little Poppy Rose having to watch her mother

having a...what we in these enlightened times

would have called "an epi" in the middle of Northampton.

But, you know, great for me!

That's nice, then.

I mean, the point is it's all happening.

But don't worry, because we're all moving on in our lives.

You and Greg, you, your awakening.

What awakening?

Oh, just me and Daisy...

fucked in a cave.

Interesting. Kept that quiet.

It actually sounded really romantic.

Apparently it was like Game of Thrones with Jon Snow

and that wildling one, but they actually had massive blocks

instead of heads.

I did my one too, actually, but in a bed.

And with heads. What?

Really? Yeah, Nicky. Really.

Because, uh, what...what resolution was your sex?

1440p.

We tried 4K but frame rate was too slow.

576 megapixels.

Now that's, that's the resolution of a human eye.

That's what I had sex in.