It had been a quiet Tuesday afternoon in A&E before the ambulance arrived. It screamed into the bay, sirens blaring, and its two paramedics were soon clattering open the building’s swing doors and rushing in with their patient: a bleeding & unconscious website, strapped firmly to a trolley.

‘Get the font specialist!’ bellowed the lead medic. Hearing the call, Dr. Aegir Hallmundur ran into the resuscitation room, followed by a phalanx of nurses.

‘Unknown website in an RTA: the server she was on crashed’ the medic continued breathlessly. ‘She’s sustained multiple injuries: several broken links, a compound corruption of the head tag plus a severed database connection. She’s lost a lot of content. Plus she’s no metadata: we’ve no idea what font type she has.’

Dr. Hallmundur looked gravely down at his ward. ‘Unknown font type eh? OK, Courier, run and get me 12 pints of Times New Roman. That’s the default, it’ll keep her alive for now. Georgia, you suture that severed database connection. Gill, I want you to go through the records, find this website’s metadata and write them all down for the nurse. We must have her CSS details, if we don’t find her font type quickly she’ll end up ugly & scarred. Picking the right font for the right design is crucial, it must be attractive, appropriate and readable. Arial, once we get that metadata let’s get this website into a grid scan, so we can rebuild her layout. I… ah good, the Courier’s back with the Times New Roman, let’s get the patient on a drip with it.’

Dr. Hallmundur glanced up at the clock. ‘It’s 5.38pm, I want this patient sewn up, with the right fonts and up on the ward in an hour. At 7pm, Tuesday 6th October I will lead an inspection at The Werks ward and I expect you all to be there, to review our work together and sort this typography out.’

Nick Kuh, the Fool, danced into the Queen’s bed chamber, twirling an aphrodisiac Flex potion lightly between his playful fingers. “Madam, I have come by for perchance that you might like this soothing… uh, orange juice.”

The Queen, at first much startled at the Fool’s unannounced appearance, coyly bowed her head and said “Well I do confess a thirst, bringst to me”. She wolfed down the brew in huge gulps and was quickly overcome with a passionate desire for Flex. “I have for me this extraordinary warmth running through my veins that makes me wish – nay long – that thoust should run amok with your Flex and show me everything it can do. Consume me, teach me now, passion for Flex groweth within me!”

“Esteemed Lady, I’ve been working at the court of King Flash for a decade. My knowledge of Flex has become deep & strong. I can show you bindings, runtime css, modules, code libraries and developing with ActionScript & MXML…”

The Queen fair swooned with excitement “Fool, taunt me with words no longer, I must have your Flex, undress me now.”

The Fool excitedly removed the royal dress. “Your beautiful pair of Spark components and the skinning features introduced in Flex 4 SDK fair take my breath away”. With professional slickness the fool whipped a Flex app out of his pocket. “Madam, this app talks to AMF server-side functions. Let us to bed, and I will share the client and server-side (PHP) code with you. Come be my queen of quick wit.”

The Queen groaned with anticipation. But the King’s footsteps were heard outside, approaching the door of the bedchamber. “Fool, take your leave of me now, but meet me again next Tuesday at The Werks at 7pm where your Flex will blossom inside me like a rose.”

Sir Alistair Ferguson stormed into the dressing room, tie swinging. ‘Listen ye cretins’ he roared ‘a fitba pitch is flat, not fuckin’ 3D. Ay’ve told ye a mil’yun times, PLAY THE BALL ON THE FUCKIN’ GROUND!‘ His raw Glaswegian accent ripped through the room. The star striker Seb Lee-Rooney looked down at his muddy boots and smirked. ‘Ay ye, aye don’t care how much the fans adore ye Lee-Rooney, ay’m the fuckin’ boss ‘ere and fitba is played on a 2D surface. Now look at this!’

He thumped the whiteboard. A series of arrows and circles had been hastily drawn up with a dry-wipe. ‘This is the Motor2 Physics system for AS3 an’ ay’m gonna drill it into yee’z thick skulls. It’s an improvement on the old Box2D system and focuses on shapes, rigid bodies, joints, forces an’ collisions, an’ lets me know if yee’z are standing on the floor in a game or flying through the air, like a bunch of fuckin’ fairies.’

He privately savoured the now rapt attention of the gently steaming room. He wiped the board clean with his forearm and began crudely sketching a new formation.

‘Aye, that’s the first half. Once ye lads understand the Motor2 system we’ll put it into practice, but as we’re not exactly blessed with any Nobel fuckin’ Laureates here we’ll take it nice and slow, eh? We’ll stick to the Box2D stuff we already know. So, in the second half, ay’m going to show ye the Box2D game ay’m working on, using a physics library to get round the Flash player’s limitations‘. At the back on the room Flash hung his head. He was the longest serving player on the team and, like everyone else, knew that he had lost a yard of pace over the years.

‘Right, on Tuesday September 15th 7pm, yee’z lot get out there. Ye better score Lee-Rooney, an’ no kissing of the badge, or I’ll bench ye for three games, get me?’

Iain Lobb-Lupin brushed aside the potions and scrolls that covered the old desk and planted a curious rectangular metal object at its centre. It was folded at the centre and one of its faces displayed a shining surface covered in mystic icons. ‘This Harry‘ he said, gasping for breath ‘is a “laptop”‘. He wiped his brow. “S’Muggle technology, essentially a primitive binary encoder, but I’ve added some Hogwash touches, which should help guard against Voldemort’s spells’. Iain turned it towards himself and started tapping away at the keys.

Harry peered at it suspiciously. ‘How will it help?’ he inquired, picking wax out of his ears.

‘Don’t clean your ears out in here dear boy, Hermione‘s already trodden bourbons into the Axminster. Now look here!’ He gesticulated wildly at the screen. ‘What this allows you to do is make “Flash Games”, like platform shooters, diabolic puzzles & bewitching role-playing fantasies, with which you can entrance Voldemort and his minions. You name it, you can make it with this… thingamabob… “laptop”, yes!’

Harry furrowed his brow and bent down for a closer look. A game called ‘Zwok‘ had materialised onscreen, a few bombs arced and exploded. Harry turned to his mentor. ‘Are you sure Iain? I mean, it looks complicated. How can I make these “Flash Games”?’

‘Why the doubts Harry, after all you’ve learned at Hogwash? I can show you exactly what you need to do. I can show you how to structure your code, how and when to use 3rd party libraries, why FlashDevelop & Flash CS4 are brilliant, the core maths that run the magic and how to make it all fun!” Harry’s eyes glinted in the pale light, as onscreen a creature called ‘DETH-EATA’ was hit by an explosion.

‘Harry, come back and see me on Tuesday 8th September at The Werks in Hove and I’ll show you the light at the end of the tunnel. And bring that Hermione with you would you, to clean up her mess, blasted nuisance!’

Harry grinned broadly. ‘I will Iain’ and, sweeping the laptop off the desk, marched briskly out of the room.