Pirate Cinema

Epilogue

Sue me/An announcement/Soldiering on

The judge only deliberated for forty-five minutes. I wasn't surprised -- the dinosaurs' case was iron clad. After all, I was guilty. All I could really say in my defense was that I thought it was real art, and that Scot would have approved. Katarina even went into the witness box and said so. But, of course, neither Scot nor his descendants were entitled to approve of my little films, and so guilty I was.

His Honor was kind, though: he reduced the damages to £152.32: one penny per charge. The entire courtroom laughed when that was announced, and I had to hide my grin. Roshan looked furious and patted me on the shoulder, but the dinosaurs' lawyer was even angrier as the giggles turned into roars of laughter. I didn't care. I wouldn't have cared if it was ten million quid.

We'd won the real fight.

That's why the crowd was laughing. Everyone -- the judge, the claimants and their expen- sive barristers -- knew that the real fight had been settled two weeks before, in Parliament, not during the long, drawn out, stupendously dull copyright trial. I'm sure that some clever lobbyist had decided, back when, that it would be incredibly effective: first, they'd de- feat TIP-Ex; then they'd get a judgment against me for millions, then they'd bring criminal charges against me and put me in jail, and every horrible pirate in the land would tremble in terror at the awful fate awaiting anyone who crossed the almighty Content Barons.

But TIP-Ex was law, there would be no criminal prosecution, and the election was on in three weeks and not one single “rogue MP” had been chucked out of her or his party. Letitia had already promised another Private Member's Bill, if re-elected, that would legalize remix videos. She told me that half the party power-brokers wanted to sack her and the other half wanted her to be the next Prime Minister. In any event, her constituents had turned up to her surgeries in hordes to tell her how happy they were with her.

I reckon I'll work on the election. Here in Bow, our MP was one of the ones who took the day off work, which is better than having voted against us. Maybe I'll campaign for her. Or maybe I'll go to Bradford and help Cora campaign for the poor bastard whose office she'd been haunting ever since I went to London.

“Are you coming out to Hester's cinema night?” I asked 26. I'd been texting her all day without a reply, so I finally broke down and called her. I knew she was working at the bookstore, but I needed to know so I could make plans with Chester and Dog, who each had a film in at the screens Hester had got permission to stick up in a community center in Brixton, where she lived.

“No,” 26 said, tensely. “You okay?”

She covered the mouthpiece and I heard her have a muffled conversation with someone. “Just a sec,” she said, and I heard her go into the back room of the store and up the little stairs that led to the tiny store-room and loo.

“Cecil,” she said.

I could tell from her tone of voice that this was going to be bad. I got that tingly feeling again, but this time there was nothing at all pleasant about it. “26?”

“I've decided on where I'm going to go for uni,” she said in a tiny voice.

“Oh,” I said.

“The thing is, I had this talk with my dad -- my biological dad -- and he told me loads of stuff he'd never said before, about how terrible he felt about letting me down, and how not getting to know me was the biggest regret in his life, and --”

I could hear that she was crying. I wished I could be there to hold her.

She snuffled. “Sorry. Sorry. Okay, well, the thing is, I don't think I ever got over his going away, never got over feeling rejected. I mean, like, I thought I had, but when I spoke to him --”

“So you're going to go to Glasgow?”

“No,” she said. “That would be a little too close. But Edinburgh has a brilliant law school. And I'd sent them an application, just as a kind of Plan B, and, well, they accepted me, and --”

“Scotland's not that far away,” I said.

She made a choked sound. “It's far, Cec. I know loads of girls who graduated last year and went away to places that are close, Reading or Oxford, and none of them stayed with their boyfriends. It was a disaster for all of them.”

“We're different --”

“Everyone thinks they're different.”

“But you and I, all the things we did, they are different -- did any of your mates get a bloody law passed before moving away to bollocky Reading?”

I was marshalling my arguments, laying them out in my head, getting ready to deliver them like it was a debate, and I was going to use logic to convince her.

She made the tiniest of laughs. “I know, I know. But Cecil, I have to do this, do you understand that? Dad called me when he heard the news about TIP-Ex, told me how proud he was of me, told me all these things I'd waited so long to hear, and --”

And I realized this wasn't a debate. It wasn't a discussion. It was an announcement. The world dropped away from me and my whole body started to shake.

She didn't say anything else. Inside, I wanted to shout, “He abandoned you! He's a cop- per! It's cold in Scotland!” I also wanted to whimper: Don't leave me all alone. But I said neither.

“Course I understand,” I said. “Course I do.” I swallowed hard a couple times. “You coming to Hester's, then?”

“You go without me,” she said. “I've got to break it to my parents.” “See you soon then?”

“Sure,” she said.

But we didn't. Something happened -- growing up, winning, her dad -- whatever, and for me, it was the summer of heartbreak. There was plenty of work to do, plenty to keep busy with, but I didn't make another film until the winter finally set in and the sun started to set at four in the afternoon and the rain shitted down your neck every time you left the house.

And then, I did make a film. And another. And another. And now, I've got to go and make another.

Commercial interlude: a new beginning

And now we are done. To be honest, all that comes after this is a bunch of housekeeping: the acknowledgements (which are sincere and heartfelt, but even I don't kid myself that most of you will care about 'em), my bio (sure to be out of date the minute this file goes live), and the full Creative Commons license, which is a miracle of modern legal virtuosity, but which is about as exciting to read as a IgNobel-prize winning ‹report recommending a report about reports about reports about reports.› But there is one thing you absolutely should read before you go, and that is the list below of places where your money can be exchanged for commercial editions of this book, either in person, by post, or electronically. And it goes without saying that if this free ebooks suits your needs, you can ‹always donate› a copy to a school or library.