I smiled at him. His stories of the old days had been a favourite of mine since childhood, stories of things I had only ever seen as exhibits in museums: "monitors", "keyboards", all the most primitive tools the pioneers had used to launch the now fabled "Team Fortress" into the world. I knew all of his tales backwards by now, but I never tired of hearing them. Besides, Team Fortress was a part of my life these days; my clan "Event Horizon" had just reached the semi-finals of the European Cup, although I could never decide which I was more proud of: my position as Offensive Co-ordinator of the reigning UKTFL champions, or the fact that I was the grandson of Horus, one of the pioneers of the original game itself, one of those few who took what was purely a cult hobby, played by a couple of thousand, and transformed it into the biggest sport in the world.

Grandpa's glass clinked gently as he shifted in his seat and took another sip of his Macallan malt. "Although gibbing them and watching the burning chunks bounce on the floor was kinda fun," he grinned. I still have a hard time believing some of his earliest stories. It baffles me how such a sophisticated team game could develop from such primitive beginnings. Apparently they couldn't even talk to each other in the first few versions! Yeah I know, hard to believe isn't it. Grandpa says they had to stop, press a button, and then actually type in what they wanted to say! How on earth any kind of co-operative team game could come from this, let alone one of the sophistication of Team Fortress, still eludes me. And yet here we are, neural-taps and all, taking for granted our ability to just plug into a terminal and actually be on a battlefield with our Clan beside us. It does me good to be reminded of the humble beginnings sometimes, if only to put things into perspective.

"Tell me about the Spice Girls, Gramps," I said hopefully. It was one of my favourite stories, but one my grandfather told only infrequently. He smiled ruefully. "Not sure I can remember all that now, you know," he lied gently. Both he and I knew his memory of those days was as sharp as it was 50 years ago, but he enjoyed playing the "old man" role from time to time, and I guess I kind of enjoyed it too. "What's the matter Gramps, finally losing it?" I chided, and he laughed, the mirth sparking the old fire in his eyes. "You be careful young man", he said. " You wouldn't want me plugging in and taking you down a peg or two before the semi-finals now, would you?". We smiled at each other. Both he and I knew there was no way he could take me in a 1 on 1 anymore, but he was shockingly good for his age even so. Besides, 1 on 1 had never been his particular forte: I think deep down it bored him. But put him in a team game, where the reflexes tighten and the brain kicks into overdrive, and even now he teaches me a thing or two.

He went on."Well that's going back a ways, a long time before I met your grandmother that's for sure. The Net was still little more than a few computers plugged together, and I actually had to log on using a phone line! Do you know what speed of connection I had to use in those days? Do you?"

I did, of course, but despite that it was something I always found hard to imagine. "28,800 bits per second!" he said, and we both laughed out loud. "I might as well have plugged in a tin can on the end of a bit of string," he continued, eyeing me mischeviously. It was a line I'd heard him use before, but I indulged him with a chuckle.

"Ah yes, and then of course there was Clan SG." He was starting to get into his story now; I could see his eyes take on that peculiar far-away look he got when he was re-living some of his memories. "There were only a few of us to start with, you know. There was me, of course, Dr Debug (later Posh Spice), Cabbage, Death..."

"You mean Uncle Dan?" I couldn't help myself interrupting. Dan was not my real uncle of course, but he had been an old enough family friend for the moniker to come easily. "Yes, good old Dan. That was well before his series of notorious libel cases though. Believe me, age mellowed him a good deal before the end," said my grandfather, a small smile of remembrance darting quickly over his lips. "Red rag to a bull, he was: never could resist an easy target. You didn't really know him in his prime though; it was a shame about that tragic accident with the steamroller."

We were both silent for a moment before he went on.

"Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, there were also Riddler, Ciderman, who you would remember as Ciderpunk, and Shillelagh. Heh. Never could work out how to pronounce that. I think that's why he abbreviated it to Shill. One day we all decided to assume Spice names on a public server, on a map called... 2castle6 I think. Yes that was it! One of those infernal things Debug made. Not a patch on the maps he made in his middle age you know, but we all had to start somewhere. I was Baby Spice, DrDebug was Posh Spice, and so on. You remember that girl band from the 1990's?"

"You mean the ones that died in that horrific exploding toilet incident? I thought they'd named themselves after you guys."

My grandfather laughed. "No, they were pretty successful in their own right for a while, they just became more famous for their amusing demise than for any of their actual music. We named ourselves after them."

"But why? I'm sure there were more appropriate names, or role-models?"

He smiled. "That was the point. It's all very well taking it seriously nowadays; you wouldn't be League Champions if you didn't take your work seriously. But in those days you have to remember it was just a hobby, a bit of fun. If the earliest Team Fortress community had taken itself too seriously, it would have imploded upon itself with all the bickering and cheating that went on. Actually it came pretty damn close to that, despite the way many people like to glorify it these days. It wasn't all amateur sportsmanship you know: the anonymity of the Net meant people could act appallingly and hide behind their on-line identities. I thank God there were enough mature people playing the game to keep it bearable, otherwise we'd be sitting here talking about football!"

He was right too. It was only 15 years ago that Team Fortress had officially passed football as the world's most popular sport, and sometimes I forgot how fragile a thing it had been in its infancy. In fact it wasn't really a sport at all, it had been more of a computer game!

"So we called ourselves Clan Spice Girls, so that others would know we were just having a laugh" (I loved it when he used those quaint figures of speech). "We were in it to have a good time, not to win at all costs; I'm not sure I'd cut it in the Leagues of today you know: all that intensity..."

"Now you know that's not true, Gramps." I said. "You played your best games when you were really hyped up. You were as much of an adrenalin junkie as I am!"

"Hehehe," he laughed. "Perhaps you're right. Shame I never got paid for it quite so well!" I couldn't help myself blushing, glancing self-consciously in the direction of the new Jaguar in the driveway outside. He winked at me. He knew only too well that we were like two peas in a pod, and that it was the glory of the Capture, the thrill of the flag-run that drove me as much as it had driven him all those years ago. Still, Grandpa hadn't exactly gone unrewarded, I reminded myself, glancing at the tall lofted ceilings and ancient oak beams around us.

With a grunt he leant forward and threw another log on the fire, startling a flock of sparks that leapt spinning and wheeling up the flue into the night sky. "Pass me that Macallan would you, son?" he said, "These nights chill my old bones more than they used to, you know."  I dutifully fetched the bottle from the shelf, and watched him refill his glass. He paused for a second, before snatching another glass from the cupboard beside him and pouring in a generous double. "Now Gramps, you know I can't drink two days before a game," I started, but was cut off by his snort of derision."Nonsense!" he said. "This isn't real drinking anyway. It'll put fire in your veins and passion in your heart. Take it. Good lad. Now then, to the Spice Girls!" and shaking my head ruefully, I drank a toast to the greatest of the Old Clans. I never could refuse my grandfather. Besides, the whisky felt good in my belly; I could feel it's warmth spreading through me as I waited for him to go on.

"Where was I? Oh yes, the first beginnings. Well of course this wasn't just the beginning of the Clan you know, it was almost the beginning of Team Fortress, with the original 7 classes. Didn't have spies in those days, or even engineers! But this small group of us decided it had a future, and that we wanted to be a part of it. And so we formed a clan, and started looking for other clans to play. We reckoned 10 members would be enough at the time...heh, how little we knew! But of course it was only 16 players per map in those days. Besides, it wasn't long before the brightest and best were coming knocking at our door. Soon after we recruited Candyman, Yob, Genocide, Nitron..."

"You mean Chancellor Nitron?" I enquired. "Yes the very same," answered my grandfather. "His organisational skills were fairly well honed even then, but he always was a bit of a control freak!" he laughed. "Still, whatever they might say about him these days, I believe his heart was always in the right place. He actually left the clan for a while too, a couple of years after we'd started." This was definitely not something I had heard before, and it piqued my curiosity. "He left?! But I thought you all stayed together for 15 years!"

"Ah, there's plenty you don't know about the history of SG, son. We actually came close to giving it all up for a while." I was shocked. What this would have meant for the development of Team Fortress I couldn't even begin to imagine; incredible how the things we take for granted as foundations of our modern life can sometimes have been so fragile. But for the vagaries of fate...I shuddered at the thought.

"Just over a year after it all started, we had a bad patch. Remember TF was still just a hobby in those days, and people only played for fun. When things began to get really tactical for the first time, there were those who didn't like it. It almost broke us. Candyman, Nitron, Yob, Milky, DeathAce, Rage, Stomm, Genocide...there are others but the distance clouds my memories. Most of them formed a new clan called South Park."

"But that was half the clan!" I protested. "You mean Milky actually left the clan?!" I couldn't believe it. One of the greatest snipers of his generation had actually left SG!

"Yes, it was hard to keep the clan together for a while, but there was a hard core that stayed loyal and kept us alive, keeping dear the ideals we stood for. They all came back in the end though. South Park only lasted a few seasons, and when Milky and Yob went through that terrible scandal with the sheep in the butter factory, they had nowhere else to go. But we took them back. Once SG, always SG we used to say, and we meant it. It was one of our strengths you know. Wearing that SG tag on your name was more than just a statement of loyalty, it was a statement of who you were. That badge brought with it an automatic respect from the rest of the community, and that was something we held very dear. Being SG meant you had a certain responsibility, an obligation to behave in a certain way."

"So how did Death make it?" I asked, and my grandfather laughed. "That's a good question. Although I think it was because he kept his Clan life and his private life separate. When Dan had one of his rants you knew it was him and not SG whose views they were. Besides, in his way he served to remind us all of our standards. There was never any spite involved, he was just having fun. Some people were so easy to wind up in those days though, especially seeing as how easy it was to misinterpret just typed words! But I digress."

"The second year was the toughest by far. For a whole year we had totally dominated the UK scene, and giving several American and European clans a good lesson in British steel. You remember OSKI?"

"Of course," I said, "one of the first great clans."

"Yes. They had their problems too, but I remember playing them for the first time. I suppose if you were to date the real emergence of SG on the international stage, it was that game. We lost, mind you, but back then we were a group of modem players scattered throughout the UK, and they were sitting round a LAN on the West Coast of America. God damn it was close though! I remember going to their server with a 1 Cap lead, but losing it early on. The rest of the game was a frag-fest with our pings in the 6-800s! Heh, all these terms probably mean nothing to you these days. Anyway, as a spy I grabbed their flag right near the end of the game, and almost got it completely out of their fort! But instead of dropping through the grate on 2forts, I tried going out via the balcony and ran into a Demolitions man in the corridor. He killed me, and we didn't manage to get the flag out. I don't think my heart ever pounded much harder than it did then, even throughout the rest of my professional career, but it taught me to always go the shortest route," he smiled.

"From then of course, we went on to beat UN, AutoAim, VVV, eLD...not without our hiccups mind you. It was about a year after the OSKI game that we started losing for the first time, and that was what split the clan. Some people thought we could go on without any real tactics, but our results were starting to tell us otherwise. Even EQ beat us a few times!"

"No way!" I exclaimed, "EQ beat you guys?!" Grandpa blushed. "It was during one of our lows. We'd lost about 15-16 members in the space of 5-6 months, a lot of our personnel were new, we'd started losing heart...it was a tough time. You don't know how close we came to jacking it all in. Well, not that we ever considered it at the time, but looking back now I see it could easily have gone both ways."

Grandpa coughed and took a gulp of his whisky. "My voice isn't what it once was," he smiled. "I think it's probably time I stopped talking." My face fell, I know because I could see his reaction. "Heh, don't worry lad. That was only the very start of our history, as well you know. But I'm tired now, and it's late. You've got an important game in a few days too, don't want you spoiling your sleep patterns."

Startled, I glanced at my watch. God, it was late, I had not even noticed the time passing! Looking round I could see the fire was almost out, it's dying embers casting a ruddy glow on our faces and glinting gently in the polished brass of the fireplace.

"I should go. I..."

"I know, lad, I know," he smiled. "Let me walk you to the door."

He stood up, his old features cast into relief by the last efforts of the hot coals, as noble and proud as he had ever been. In that moment I suddenly realised how close we were, both physically and in spirit, and for a split second it was like looking into my own soul.

We walked to the door in silence, no words needed.

As he turned the handle the cold rush of air shocked me back to my senses; I paused, then stepped over the threshold and turned to face him. "Thanks Gramps. For everything." He said nothing, but just smiled, and I turned towards the car. The gravel crunched satisfyingly beneath my feet, echoing back from the stable wall in the clear night air, and just as I reached the Jag, I heard Grandpa draw breath.

"Remember son, it's the glory you're playing for. Screw defense, just get out there and score more than the bastards!"

I drove away into the night, my heart full of hope. I knew now that I could not lose: I had history on my side.