Free Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg Page B

consequences of fame. Besides, as a naive little seven-year-old, enjoying his first brush with show business, I would probably have looked into the eyes of the 38-year-old time traveller and asked, ‘Why so serious?’

3
    The jet lifted into the air like a big black aeroplane as the roof of Pegg Manor settled back into its mock-Tudor splendour, so that people passing on the A1 wouldn’t know that billionaire philanthropist Simon Pegg had a heavily armed stealth bomber in his loft conversion. Canterbury, Pegg’s faithful mechanical companion and butler, completed a number of pre-flight checks, flicking various switches and surveying an ellipse of readouts on the hi-tech dashboard.
    ‘Shouldn’t you have done that before take-off?’ enquired Pegg.
    ‘You seemed quite eager to leave, sir,’ explained Canterbury. ‘I thought I might do it on the hop.’
    ‘I like your initiative,’ mused Pegg with a small but devastating smile, which gave Canterbury a thrill even though he was a robot. ‘And you’re right, I was eager to leave. We have to get to Morocco and find the Scarlet Panther before it’s too late.’
    ‘That does sound awfully urgent, sir,’ chirruped Canterbury, a note of concern in his synthetic voice. ‘What will happen if we don’t find her?’
    ‘Well, you can kiss your metal ass goodbye,’ Pegg returned with a gloomy heavy sigh. ‘Not just your ass but all our asses, every ass on the face of this planet.’
    ‘Go on, sir,’ said Canterbury, encouraging Pegg to deliver much-needed exposition.
    ‘Two nights ago, I received a mysterious tweet that I simply could not ignore,’ confided Pegg.
    ‘I thought you were switching Twitter off until you finish your book,’ said Canterbury honestly.
    ‘Yes, well, I was just having a look at it one last time before I started in earnest. I wasn’t pontificating or anything.’
    Canterbury said nothing.
    ‘Look, the point is,’ said Pegg heatedly, ‘last week the Scarlet Panther broke into the Museum of Egyptian Antiquity in Cairo and stole the Star of Nefertiti.’
    ‘Is that the thing that makes all the exhibits come to life?’ enquired Canterbury.
    ‘This is reality, Canterbury!’ roared Pegg. ‘The Star of Nefertiti is a magic diamond that when slotted into the lost tablet of Amenhotep IV fires a laser into the heart of the Sun, causing a solar flare that heats up the Earth’s core and destabilises the tectonic plates that hold the very surface of the planet together, bringing about the end of days.’
    ‘Like in that film
2012
?’ offered Canterbury.
    ‘Worse,’ said Pegg with enormous seriousness. ‘This makes
2012
look like
2001
in terms of action and excitement. We’ve got to stop her!’
    ‘But what of the tablet of Amenhotep IV?’ enquired Canterbury helpfully.
    ‘Its whereabouts are unknown,’ conceded Pegg grimly. ‘It used to reside at the estate of Colonel Barnabus McCartney in Surrey but when the Colonel died mysteriously in 1994, his possessions were distributed privately according to his will. It could be anywhere.’
    ‘Forgive me, sir,’ said Canterbury, facilitating the divulgence of further information, ‘but if the Scarlet Panther knew the whereabouts of the tablet, why would she want to bring about the end of days by combining it with the Star of Nefertiti? She’s just a gorgeous cat burglar/nemesis, with whom you have a passionate and complex on-off relationship.’
    Pegg’s eyes became unfocused as his mind drifted elsewhere followed by his penis.
    ‘I see it!’ Canterbury exclaimed.
    ‘What?’ said Pegg, adjusting his trousers.
    ‘She doesn’t want to destroy the world. She probably doesn’t realise the true power of the Star of Nefertiti. She simply acquired it and someone paid her very handsomely to do so.’
    ‘But whom?’ mused Pegg.
    ‘Who?’ said Canterbury very quietly.
    ‘That’s what we have to find out, old friend, it could simply be a diamond collector or it could be someone who