A Brief Recap.....

Iris woke up, she had forgotten the previous 3 months, either that or she had been reprogrammed.

"Damn it, not again", she muttered. Her head hurt.

Thankfully she had made copious handwritten notes, so all she had to do was read them. She pondered for a moment. Did she really want to know? Couldn't she just make up something new? Would anyone notice?
Maybe if she flicked through her notebook she could pick out pertinent clues, and characters, and piece it all together. She sighed, it felt like a momentous task, but it had to be done, and so she began to make short notes from her extensive notes.

In the beginning there is a man called Douglas Manning who Iris was spying on. He has a wife called Annie, who is blonde. A short man with a large gun wearing a pink rabbit onesie kidnaps Annie.

Douglas Manning tries to make off with a suitcase of used banknotes to rendezvous with the mysterious Mr Short [who is not the man with the large gun] in Harwich.

Rennie Hightower lives in a mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest, he is a janitor at a strip club and is a little bit in love with Iris, although they have only met online via a Facebook group for fans of author P.G. Wodehouse. Iris sends Rennie an email asking for his help.

Iris was once a Go-Go dancer in London and has links with espionage. She believes Douglas Manning is watching her. Have they met before?

Douglas tries to wake Iris. They are in her bedroom. Douglas discovers Iris's notebooks under her bed. Douglas and Iris confirmed to have a historical connection. Iris is wide eyed yet unconscious.

Rennie recieves an email from Iris, which activates a dormant area of his brain. Yes! Rennie is also some kind of spy! Or is he? He recovers a lock-box from beneath his floorboards that contains an array of passports and credit cards so that he can assume a variety of identities. The box also contains a genuinely smart Smart-phone that connects to an exclusive network, operated by a super-computer. He heads to the airport.

Douglas is with Iris. He is deciding how best to wake her from her open-eyed coma. He also really fancies a banana. Douglas notices a faint, blinking light behind Iris's right ear - a light that was flashing under her skin! Douglas discovers that Iris was made in Taiwan.

Rennie has a microscopic speaker implanted in his ear canal and the voice of SpodeChode69 notifies him that the Iris unit has been compromised. Rennie uses a banana to stun an Uber driver by using the tip of the banana on a pressure point behind the driver's left ear. Rennie drives to the airport and then takes a super-stealth plane to England. Rennie reminisces on how he met Iris in London when she was a go-go dancer. He lied to her about being a spy. Iris was a robot even then, but she didn't know it. He recalls how his body and mind were modified and enhanced to serve a powerful master. He eats a banana.

Annie overpowers the short man with the large gun who wears a pink rabbit onesie. Annie was not kidnapped! She takes the gun from the short man and locks him in her attic with a plate of fish fingers and a large colouring book. Annie is furious for a variety of reasons, but mainly because she is not the central character in this fiction. Annie has a plan and a loaded gun.

Recently widowed Tina Cruet visits her neighbours Aubrey and Martharine Stoad in Frigwell Crescent. She has ideas above her station. Cheryl Stoad, 28, is the daughter of Aubrey and Matherine. Cheryl hopes to find fame on Britain's got Talent by playing Go and Tell Aunt Nancy on the recorder. The Stoads have a Golden Retriever called Scarlet [ahem]. Tina has designs on Aubrey - It was Aubrey who helped Tina cope with the isolation and despair the complex feelings that grief brings, after a while they found themselves being drawn together and by the time the police and forensics had been to take away Percy's body, Aubrey had already given her one over the arm of the chair. Did Tina murder her husband, Percy?

Cheryl has an inner ear problem. What could this mean? Iris sneaks up on Cheryl in the Stoads back garden. There appears to be a real Iris, and an Irisbot. The real Iris asks Cheryl for her help. Cheryl eventually agrees to help the real Iris. They go to Douglas and Annie's house with the intention of rescuing Annie from the large gun with a small man. Annie has saved herself. They then go to Iris's house. Iris wants her boxes but Douglas is still in the bedroom with the Irisbot. As they hear Douglas descend the stairs, Iris leads Cheryl into the Inglenook fireplace, which conceals a secret entrance to a long corridor lined with ornately carved wooden chairs - a row on either side facing inwards, with a gap of about three metres between each chair - every chair had something on it - most contained books.

Meanwhile, on a back road near Harwich... Douglas is preparing to take a ferry to Hoek. On arrival he travels to small, nondescript shop on a back street and asks the shopkeeper for some sticky-backed dildo. This appears to be some sort of code.

A time-jump back to Frigwell Crescent. Rennie arrives outside Iris's house just as Douglas is leaving for Harwich. Rennie is dressed as a woman having accidentally selected the wrong passport and credit card from his lock-box. Douglas steals Rennie's car with all his documents; his jacket; his phone; and most importantly, his connection to SpodeChode. Annie 'rescues' Rennie whilst holding the large gun.

Back in the Pacific Northwest, Detective Lieutenant Milton Frobisher studies the autopsy report of an Uber driver - the driver that Rennie had compromised with the tip of a banana. Frobisher goes in pursuit of Rennie in connection with the death. At Rennie's apartment block he meets the very disturbing Svetlana, who is probably Russian. She shows Frobisher Rennie's empty room. Frobisher gets a call from a lab technician re the death of the Uber driver - it seems he was killed by a substance from a banana. Frobisher is familiar with similar deaths.

Annie and Rennie [now Nina] have a fight. The large gun goes off in Rennie's direction but he is protected by the Dolly Parton bra. Iris and Cheryl appear from nowhere and save Rennie from Annie.

Hazel????!! OH - Tina's sister Hazel!! Hazel is from Blackpool and has gone to stay with her sister Tina in Frigwell Crescent. Aubrey meets Hazel at Poobury station - they have a romantic interlude in the back of the car. Hazel still hasn't told Tina that their mother is dead and rolled up in an old carpet in the loft and that Hazel had been collecting their mother's pension for the last 5 years.

Back in the chair lined corridor. Cheryl is bored and takes a detour up a rusty ladder and pushes past a man cover to find herself in a copse. She is hit on the head by a flying object, and then another, which makes her fall back down into the endless corrider filled with chairs and more ladders. Cheryl tries another ladder and pushes past another manhole cover, this time she is hit by a banana. Cheryl gives up and follows Iris instead.

An interview with Matherine Stoad - where we discover that Cheryl has made two appearances on The Undateables. Cheryl has a brother called Allardyce who collects ornamental thimbles and mints his peas. 

Flashback to 1990 - A reference to a series of banana-tip deaths. Milton Frobisher was a humble patrolman. He was partnered with a senior detective called Torvik. Sadly, Torvik was killed in the line of duty by a shadowy figure wielding a banana. Frobisher had his mind wiped by a mystery figure and told that if he wanted to make detective, he would forget what he had seen the night of Torvik's death, and he shouldn’t pursue the banana case any more. 30 years later and Frobisher is revisited by a wave of memories whilst working on the case of the dead Uber driver. Finally, Frobisher is arrested for the murder of the disturbing Svetlana [probably Russian]. She has been found dead with Frobisher's pen sticking out of her neck.

Iris sighed. It had only taken her 5 hours to write a brief recap of the last three months. She felt that she ought to be declared a hero. Anyhow, it was time to press publish and be damned. She hoped that blogger wouldn't mess her formatting up like it did five minutes ago....

Rennie Takes Flight

At that very moment, Rennie received a message via the microscopic speaker implanted in his ear canal.

“The Iris unit has been compromised. Make haste.” 


It was the voice of SpodeChode69, the self-applied nickname of Super Computer 6900. After all, what good was artificial intelligence without a sense of humor? The earlier text message from Iris had actually come from SpodeChode. Its highly evolved algorithms had detected the imminent breakdown in Iris’ relatively crude system (the early models always were a bit twitchy, as the movie quote goes). Its summations were proved by Douglas’ tugging at Iris’ tag. Why had they left that there, anyway? Oh, well, that decision had been made before SpodeChode’s time. Now it was up to SpodeChode to fix the problem. Typical.


Rennie said to the Uber driver, “I’m going to need to take over.” As the driver turned a wondering look toward him, Rennie snatched up a banana that the driver had been intending to eat for lunch from the cup holder in the center console and rammed it into the pressure point behind the driver’s left ear, momentarily stunning him. In practically the same fluid movement, Rennie unbuckled the driver’s seat belt, opened his door and shoved him out, then slipped behind the wheel and sped away.


The driver came too as he was doing a fast barrel roll right into the path of an oncoming light rail vehicle. “Oh, well”, he thought, “that job sucked anyway”.


Rennie made great time to the airport. His speeding and the many incongruously placed vegetable stands and stacks of cardboard boxes that he smashed through failed to initiate a police chase, thanks in large part to SpodeChode’s ability to control many human systems and activities, such as 911 calls, traffic cameras, police bulletins and even to issue “do not pursue” orders anywhere in the world.


When Rennie arrived at the airport, he didn’t bother with such mundane affairs as ticket counters and boarding gates. Instead, he took a service road to a seemingly disused hangar in a remote corner of the complex, where a super-fast stealth plane waited to whisk him to England.


During the flight, Rennie had time to reflect upon his relationship with Iris. He had seen her dancing at a go-go club, and had taken her to dinner at St. Ermin’s Hotel. He was trying to impress her, so he told her fantastic tales of espionage, when in reality he was only a private in the army, with dreams of one day being a spy. Be careful what you wish for.


He didn’t know then that Iris wasn’t a human. Even Iris didn’t know her true nature. By the time he found out, it was already too late for both of them. He had already gone down a dark path, one lined with laboratories where his body and mind were modified and enhanced to serve a powerful master.


He realized he was still holding the banana. He ate it. Mmmm, banana.