FREEEEEEEEEDOM

Their eyes were wide, white beacons in the unstable darkness that engulfed them. It took them all a moment to register that they really were free. I knew the feeling. All that time with time passing so slowly and your life changing right down to the most minute of details, you were bound to have an altered perception of time. How could you not? Sat next to me, Ben glanced at me, his eyes hinting he felt the same.
 "There's kids there," he whispered, "Loads of them. How are we gonna get out of here and keep them safe?"
 "I think there's more trucks coming."
 Yes, Alan must have buzzed some guys on the radio because a whole convoy of army vehicles was trickling around the edge of the battlefield, edging ever closer to the rescue of these fifty or so civilians - though just now they were looking more like a hundred frightened sheep. Ah, sheep. Alan warned us not to leave the car as they loaded hostage after hostage into the car.
 Then they noticed.
 One of the terrorists signalled another, who signalled another, then another, then another, then they all knew. By now there were only a few stragglers left to haul into the trucks but we didn't wait for them. Of course we didn't. We weren't going to wait around like sitting ducks! And we hoped the others wouldn't either. The trucks must have been full by now. I was in the left seat of the car's back row, Ben in the right. We gazed out of opposite windows and I could see out the side of my peripheral vision that everyone else was occupied in basically the same way. The forest didn't rush past, because it was one thing. One long, monotonous trail of green and brown. It was boring. I shut my eyes.

 "Jo!" Ben laughed, "Wake up! We're here."
 "Huh?" my sticky eyes seemed unwilling to discontinue their compensation for my late night.
 "C'mon, we're getting out."
 I sat bolt upright in the seat and whipped my head to the right to face him.
 "How can we possibly be here? How can it have gone off without a hitch?"
 "It ... It hasn't, I'm sorry. There have been ... a number of deaths."
 "Who? The hostages? The soldiers?"
 "It was a few of the hostages, the last ones to get into the trucks. You've heard of one of them, Jake?"
 "Oh, God, the Ceilidh kid. How many?"
 "Ten. I know. But, they will get a great funeral because the government will pay for it and they'll be remembered by the whole country, probably other countries too."
 "What about the soldiers?" I asked, jogging to join Shannen, Guntas, Alex and Rebecca.
 "I don't know yet," he replied, "But I know that Alan's okay and I'm going to go talk to him because you all have a visitor."
 I was by now in a circle with my TwitterFriends. Their faces were pale and sweaty and their eyes could not have been less suited to a union of friends. They could not have been more suited to their surroundings, however. Everywhere people were grieving. We'd squashed the terrorists, captured the leader and would squeeze out their motives hopefully soon. Still, there had been death on both sides and grief knew no discrimination. Everybody felt just as helpless, simply about different people.
 Then I heard footsteps approaching from behind. What? I turned round but the figure had crossed to the other side of the circle. Ben and Alan smirked from a few metres away, gazing at the figure who was entering the circle from behind Guntas. Eliza. Eliza drifted toward the centre as Shannen approached to meet her. We closed in around them and knew that what we'd felt during their two-day hiatus was not frivolous. Twitter is real. We make friends with real people. Real people who are awesome. Think of the number of awesome people you know in real life. Now multiply it by several hundred and you've got the Twitter community. Ben was right.

""Oh, I am," he replied, "Say, for example, the theory that there is one woman in the world for me, my soulmate, is true, which I don't believe in the slightest. The world is a big place. What if I never meet her. What if I never go on Twitter and realise there's this person who's interests exactly mirror mine and we are two of a kind, we are two-nique. Without Internet, I will never meet this person unless I live near her. I mean, how many other people from Brighton do you actually talk to, Joanne?"
 

 Shannen and Eliza are two-nique. Not in their awesomeness, no, many other Tweeters are that. What we know from how much we missed them during those two awful days is that they are our friends, just as the friends we've known since Primary School are. The only difference is geography. So, before I leave you with the epilogue, I'll say this. Geography is discrimination.