In this week’s story our protagonist preys on elderly ladies, parting them from their money and their lives. Can anyone stop him? And can they stop him quickly enough to prevent him claiming another victim?

Julian gazed at the crowd of mourners thoughtfully. She was here somewhere; he knew it.

“How did you know Brigitte?” said a voice.

He jumped, and turned to see an elderly woman with a sharp, inquisitive face, grey hair swept back into a ponytail.

“Oh, I was her lodger,” he replied, wiping away a tear.

“You’re Julian,” said the woman. “She often spoke of you. She loved you dearly, you know.”

“I loved her too,” said Julian. “She taught me so much. She was so good to me. After my parents died I was completely at sea. If I hadn’t met Brigitte, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“You poor thing,” said the woman, understandingly.

She seemed to hesitate, searching his face.

“I’m Sarah,” she said, suddenly, extending her hand. “A friend of Brigitte’s.”

“Lovely to meet you,” said Julian, taking her hand. “I think perhaps we’ve met before? Didn’t I see you at the house a few months ago?”

“You have an excellent memory, young man,” said Sarah.

“I could never forget such a beautiful face.”

Inwardly he winced, wondering if he’d laid the flattery on too thick, but he took care to utter the words with a warm smile infused with a touch of humour.

She seemed to take it in the manner for which he’d hoped.

“Bless you,” she said. “I was beautiful once, but the years have taken their toll.”

“Age has its own kind of beauty,” said Julian earnestly.

“And what will you do now, Julian?” Sarah asked.

“I-I don’t know,” he said. “I shall have to stay in a hostel for a bit.”

“You’re a writer, I understand?”

“That’s right. Well, sort of.”

He laughed, self-deprecatingly.

“Nothing actually published yet, but my publisher’s given me an advance for my first novel. Not enough to live the high life quite just yet.”

He laughed again, taking care to inject his laughter with a suitable degree of sadness. This, he had practised carefully and extensively in front of a mirror.

“You know, Julian,” said Sarah, her speech slow and thoughtful as though broaching a sensitive topic, “since my husband died I’m rattling around in a big old house all by myself. You’d be most welcome to stay with me for a while if you’d like. At least until your book’s published.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.” said Julian. “It’s incredibly good of you to offer. Brigitte always had excellent taste in friends. But no, I’ll be happy enough in a hostel for a while.”

“What nonsense.” said Sarah pleasantly. “Brigitte wouldn’t have wanted you staying in a hostel. At least come and have a tea with me at my house. I’d love to hear your memories of Brigitte. Don’t make any firm decisions just yet.”

“I’d love to come for a tea,” said Julian. “Thank you.”

“The pleasure would be all mine. Sometimes I feel so terribly alone since Raymond died.”

A dark wave passed over her face. Julian could sense her pain. Searching for pain was a skill he’d developed assiduously.

“It must be very difficult,” said Julian, his face grave and knowing.

“I mustn’t complain,” said Sarah. “We had a good run together. How about next Tuesday around three in the afternoon?”

“That would be lovely.”

There was a faint drizzle in the air as the mourners made their way back to their cars from the graveside.

He wouldn’t decide just yet, he thought. She seemed an excellent prospect, but he had pretty well got her in the bag, and seeing him charming a few other old people at the wake would only make her all the more keen.

Really it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

At the wake he exchanged only a few further words with her, on neutral topics, but carefully demonstrating his education and compassion. When he drove home in his car—an ageing Polo, quite inferior to the Porsche Cayman he kept in a garage in London—he was sure she was the one. Everything about her suggested significant wealth, perhaps not on the scale he’d ideally like but certainly enough to enable him to take the next step up the ladder. With another half a million behind him he could make a good attempt at the rich old ladies of Kensington or even Mayfair.

Yes, Julian Enfield was moving up in the world; there could be no doubt about that. He might even treat himself to a Carrera if all went well.

He wondered vaguely why she had said next Tuesday, and not tomorrow or Saturday? That might suggest an active social life, which was potentially a double-edged sword. On the one hand, friends might form suspicions. On the other hand, they might provide him with a new tasty mark.

Most likely she had simply not wanted to appear too eager, he thought.

On Friday he went to stay at his tiny flat in London. He took the Porsche out for a drive in the Chilterns, accelerating far past the speed limit. In the evening he hung about in the bars of Soho for a while, picking up a small gaggle of new acquaintances, then he took three of them to his favourite club. In the club he picked up a young woman and he spent the night at her apartment. Then in the morning he told her he had to go to work, and he walked an hour to the garage, enjoying the bright sunshine and the morning breeze, all the while thinking about Sarah.

He drove the Porsche to his makeshift lab, where he looked both ways up and down the street, and slipped inside.

Julian flicked on the lights one by one, wiping the dust from the switches off his fingertips with a handkerchief.

There it was: his beautiful apparatus.

He walked around inspecting it. Everything was in place.

His greatest fear was a police raid. To a casual observer, the place looked like a drugs lab. A police raid might set him back even months. Very unlikely the police would find anything, of course. Even if they did, technically he was doing nothing wrong. Not as far as the chemicals in the lab went. No, at worst he had violated some minor zoning or health and safety regulations.

He checked the respirator and decided to fit fresh filters to the mask. Then he donned the hazmat suit and set to work.

A fresh batch would be needed, but he was completely out of phenylmagnesium bromide. He began to synthesise a new batch, grinding up magnesium flakes in a coffee grinder. The suit was probably unnecessary at that stage.

“Your health is precious, old boy,” he said to himself. “Best not take any chances.”

He didn’t trust the bromylbenzene, nor the ether, and he had only an ineffective improvised fume cupboard to work with. The worst thing, aside from any risk to his health, would be an ether fire. The stuff could pool invisibly on the floor, where the slightest spark would set it off. But Julian had faith in his abilities.

After three hours of work, he disrobed from the hazmat suit, got back into his Porsche, and drove half an hour to see his dealer, Spiv. Spiv, in spite of his nickname and his many tattoos, was surprisingly middle-class and lived in a fairly nice apartment.

“What do you want?” Spiv asked, once Julian was inside Spiv’s flat.

“Pills,” said Julian. “Same ones you sold me last time. Let’s say, twenty of them.”

“Twenty?” said Spiv, surprised.

“I’ve got a lot of friends,” said Julian, with a smile.

While Spiv busied himself looking through carefully-organised drawers, he said, “You should stick around for a bit. We can smoke some weed.”

“No can do,” said Julian. “I’ve business to conduct.”

Spiv located a bag of small blue pills and handed them to Julian.

“I won’t ask what business that might be,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “That’ll be two hundred.”

Julian handed over the money.

“Be back next week, probably,” he said, as he was leaving.

“Counting on it.”

The following week, Julian went to Sarah’s house. She beamed at him when she opened the door.

“Julian!” she said. “How lovely to see you again. Do come in.”

The house was exactly as Julian had hoped for: large, well-kept, expensive-looking.

Inside she offered him a tea, which he accepted, and they sat drinking it and chatting.

“Didn’t you and Ray have children?” Julian asked, forming his face into an expression of mild sympathy.

“No, Ray wasn’t able to, and we didn’t want to adopt.” said Sarah. “I don’t regret it, really.”

Julian nodded in satisfaction. No children or grandchildren to steal his house.

“Having children is overrated,” he said.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Sarah. “Ray and I led very busy lives, in any case. Hard to imagine how we would even have found the time for children. Some days we would barely see each other. But you know, every day, no matter how busy we were, we always sat and had a hot chocolate together at some point: in the afternoon if Ray was home, otherwise in the evening. It’s so rare to find a man who really appreciates chocolate. Now I drink my cup of chocolate alone.”

Her eyes became misty and unfocused, and she stared into the distance, through the watercolours on the wall above the fireplace.

“I love a good hot chocolate,” said Julian, seizing his chance.

“Do you really?” said Sarah.

“Yes, I’ve never much liked chocolate in solid form, but I’ve always loved a nice mug of hot chocolate.”

“But how marvellous!” said Sarah.

She gazed at him fondly for some moments, then said, in a tone of voice that suggested she hardly dared raise the topic, “You wouldn’t like to have a mug of chocolate with me now, would you? It would mean so much to me. It would be the first time since Ray’s passing that I’ve had someone to drink with.” She winked. “They do say you should never drink alone.”

“I’d like that very much,” said Julian. “It would be an honour.”

Sarah laughed, and Julian laughed too.

“It’s settled!” she said, and she went to the kitchen.

Julian followed her. The kitchen was huge, with an island in the middle for preparing food or eating. Copper pans hung from a series of hooks, and immaculate machines for making pasta and slicing meat stood around the sides.

Julian half-thought he might hang on to the house for a bit after he’d persuaded her to leave it to him in her will, just so he could enjoy the kitchen. Then, course, he’d sell it, because he didn’t want to live in someone’s old house. No, he would spend the money upgrading his apartment and purchasing a Carrera. The life he could live, with all this extra money!

“Here we go,” said Sarah, handing him a mug of chocolate. “I’ve added a little almond essence into it. I always like to add something a little extra, to make it a bit special. You do like almonds, don’t you?”

“Oh, I love almonds.” said Julian.

They sat in the living room drinking the chocolate. Julian asked about the watercolours hanging on the walls, and Sarah explained that she used to paint, and had even held exhibitions.

Julian pretended to be impressed.

The following day, Julian went back to the makeshift lab and completed the next stage of the synthesis. He also went to his usual chocolate shop, and bought a hand-picked selection of chocolates in a fancy box. These, he stashed in the fridge, checking the humidity and refreshing the little tray of calcium chloride for absorbing water.

A week later he moved into Sarah’s house.

“I’m so happy to have some company again,” she told him.

She insisted on cooking for him, and even on washing his clothes.

Two weeks went by before he was ready to begin dosing her. By that time they had established a regular routine, drinking hot chocolate together in the evening whenever Julian was at home in the evening, and in the afternoon or even the morning, when he wasn’t.

She told him all about her life; her struggles in the art world, her marriage to Ray—sometimes while holding his photograph with tears glistening in her eyes—and her failed attempts to become an actress. Ray, she said, had died only three years ago, and she clearly missed him greatly.

He decided to tell Spiv about her. Spiv was the only person he knew who would really understand.

“I’m already like that with her,” he said, the next time he was at Spiv’s apartment. He held up an intertwined middle- and index-finger. “She trusts me completely.”

“You’ve going to start giving her the stuff this week?” Spiv asked.

“Yep,” said Julian. “It’s almost ready.”

“How long will it take?”

“Maybe six months.”

Spiv whistled, and dragged on his joint.

“You really play the long game, man,” he said.

“Six months is nothing,” said Julian. “The first one I did, it took me a year and a half.”

“Shouldn’t you convince her to add you to her will before you start poisoning her?”

Julian smiled, a self-consciously wicked smile.

“No need,” he said. “Two months tops and she’ll be begging me to let her put me in her will. I’m going to tell her I dream of setting up a donkey sanctuary. She loves donkeys. Anyway, some of them don’t even start thinking properly about their wills till they’re actually dying. A bit of poisoning will help her develop the right ideas.”

“Brilliant,” said Spiv, shaking his head in amazement at Julian’s genius. “I’d never be able to manage the whole thing.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Julian agreed. “It takes charm, intelligence and sophistication.”

Spiv swore at him good-humouredly.

After visiting Spiv and buying more pills for the following weekend, he went back to the lab and finished cleaning the MPTP, which he then dissolved in warm glycerol. Then he took the chocolates and carefully injected a couple of millilitres into each chocolate, leaving out only the coffee-creams.

Then, still wearing the hazmat suit, he took a spatula he’d warmed up in a beaker of hot water and meticulously smoothed over the injection hole.

He began feeding her the chocolates the very next day.

“These are lovely,” she said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” he said. “A friend of mine owns a very exclusive chocolate shop in London. I picked these out by hand.”

“Let’s have a hot chocolate and we’ll start on them now,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “Oh, but you don’t like chocolate. Have I remembered right?”

“I might be persuaded, just this once,” said Julian.

“No, I won’t force you,” said Sarah. “I shall put them next to my bed and I’ll eat a few before sleeping, while I read for a bit. I’ll look forward to it tremendously.”

“Sounds like an excellent plan,” said Julian.

He was privately relieved that he wouldn’t have to eat the coffee creams. There was always a faint chance of picking the wrong chocolate by mistake. He was, after all, human.

In the following weeks, Julian observed Sarah carefully for signs of deterioration.

He wasn’t disappointed.

“I’m so stiff recently,” she shouted one morning, as she descended the stairs.

“Maybe it’s arthritis?” Julian shouted in reply. “You should see a doctor, Sarah.”

“You know what I think about doctors.”

“All the same. I’m worried about you. You don’t seem quite yourself recently.”

“It’ll pass.” she said. “All things pass.”

But it didn’t pass. Over the following months, Sarah’s condition worsened. She began to stoop and her fingers trembled when she rested them in her lap or on the arm of her chair. Her movements became slow and cramped, and her voice low and monotonous.

“Julian, I need to talk to you about something,” she said, one day, after Julian had been explaining his donkey sanctuary plans again.

“Yes?” said Julian.

“As you know, Ray and I didn’t have children, so I’ve no-one to leave my things to after I die.”

“Sarah!” said Julian, as if outraged. “You’re not going to die for a long time yet.”

“I don’t know, Julian.” she said. “The past months I haven’t felt so good. I feel as though I’m not long for this world.”

Her hands trembled as she spoke, the trembling extending all the way up her arm. Her head was nodding over, rather reminding him of Spiv in the middle of a weed session. She seemed to have aged fifteen years in the past few months.

“Sarah, you need to see a doctor.”

“If I agree to see a doctor, will you allow me to put you in my will?”

“I’m touched, Sarah, but it’s really not necessary. Why don’t you leave your things to a good cause? Or perhaps a cousin?”

“I don’t have any cousins,” said Sarah, as Julian well knew. “Do we have a deal or don’t we?”

“If that’s what it takes for you to see a doctor, then yes.”

She smiled.

“Good boy.” she said.

“You’ll see a doctor this week?”

“I’ll make the appointment now.”

In fact, she saw a doctor the following week, which was the earliest appointment available. The doctor informed Sarah that she was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, and prescribed medication.

“I might live another twenty years, or I might die next year,” Sarah told Julian. “The doctor’s worried that it seems to have come on rather quickly. That’s a bad sign, apparently.”

“I’ve heard of it.” said Julian. “It’s not usually fatal. You’ll be fine, Sarah, don’t worry.”

“What’s wrong?” said Sarah, alarmed by the sudden change in Julian’s facial expression.

“Oh, I’m just worried about you,” said Julian, recovering quickly.

“Try not to worry,” she said. “Let’s have a hot chocolate and a good natter, shall we?”

“That would be great.” said Julian.

As soon as her back was turned he stared at his hand. When resting by his side on the sofa, it trembled uncontrollably.

He must have exposed himself somehow, he thought. A common fate among all those who dealt with MPTP. He cursed out loud, forgetting himself.

“What’s that?” said Sarah.

“Nothing!” said Julian. “I just hit my elbow.”

He went straight to the laboratory as soon as he could reasonably get away. He swabbed the dust on every surface and sent the swabs to a lab.

The results came back three days later. The lab had detected no MPTP in any of the swabs, nor anything chemically similar to it.

For several weeks he half-convinced himself that the trembling was psychosomatic. Perhaps he was imagining it. It did seem to come and go. Then, one morning, he noticed a definite stiffness in his muscles.

He decided to send one of the pills he’d got from Spiv for analysis. That also came back negative, but it was impossible to be certain that some chemical in the pills hadn’t turned into MPTP during metabolism.

When he saw Spiv again, he tackled him about it.

“Listen Spiv, I’ve got tremors. Those pills you sold me are messing me up.”

“No way, man,” said Spiv. “Thousands of people have taken those pills.”

“You’re telling me none of them have got ill?”

“A couple of them died but they overdosed. Probably took a lot of other stuff too. No-one’s got tremors, dude.”

Spiv’s face was slightly pale and Julian thought he could perhaps detect a trace of guilt, but Julian suspected that Spiv was simply scared of him, and after all, there was no question that the pills were potentially lethal if misused, and sometimes even when used correctly. Not even Spiv would try to deny that.

“If the pills didn’t cause my tremors, what did?”

“Might be a natural thing,” Spiv suggested. “Might be your lab.”

“I swabbed the lab and the swabs came back clean.”

“It’s probably in the air. You told me some dudes in America were looking for some chemist that made MPTP once, and when they found him he was all, like, shuffling about and stooped over, poisoned by his own medicine. If a professional chemist can’t avoid poisoning himself with that stuff, what chance have you got? No offence, my man.”

Julian had a quiet, grave think, on his feet.

“It’s possible,” he said.

“It’s totally possible,” said Spiv.

“I wear a hazmat suit with industrial-grade filters.”

“Means nothing,” said Spiv, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “Micrograms, that’s all it takes. You said so yourself. You telling me micrograms can’t get through those filters?”

Over the following months, Julian’s condition worsened. He synthesised one last enormous batch of MPTP and made ten boxes of chocolates. That ought to be enough to finish the old bag off, he thought.

He stopped taking the pills, sticking to alcohol at the weekends.

One morning he woke up with incredible stiffness in his limbs and found it difficult to even jolt himself into activity. The cover of his duvet seemed to draw him in, as though pulling him into a timeless realm where only the duvet existed.

That same day he made an appointment to see a Harley Street doctor.

The doctor scheduled him for an MRI scan.

A week later, sitting in the MRI machine as it banged and clanked, he wondered feverishly where he had gone wrong.

He knew what the doctor was going to say. He had Parkinons’s disease. Somehow, from somewhere, MPTP had got into his system; almost certainly. It was destroying the substantia nigra in his midbrain. His brain was becoming unable to communicate with his body.

Sure enough, a week later, the doctor gave him the news he was expecting.

“You have Parkinson’s disease,” the doctor told him. “I’m going to prescribe levodopa. It should provide immediate relief from some of your symptoms, but it may cause movements that you find difficult to control. I’m also prescribing an MAO-B inhibitor. That will help the levodopa to work.”

“What’s the prognosis, doctor?” Julian asked nervously.

“Very hard to say,” said the doctor. “I’ll be honest, Julian. It’s a bad sign that it’s develop this rapidly, and in someone so young. We’ll have to take it week by week.”

Julian picked up the prescription at a chemist and, sitting in his Porsche, washed it down with mineral water from a plastic bottle.

Then he drove to see Spiv again.

He had to bang repeatedly at Spiv’s door and shout Spiv’s name before he answered, wearing a dressing gown and clearly drugged up to the gills with something.

“What’s the problem, man?” said Spiv. “You’re not normally here on … whatever day it is today.”

“I want you to be honest with me. Has anyone else developed tremors from your pills?”

Julian shut the door behind himself.

“No, no way, man,” said Spiv.

But Spiv’s face had a distinctly guilty look to it.

Julian grabbed him by the collar.

His hand felt weak. Spiv could easily have pushed him off if he’d chosen to, and if he hadn’t been half out of his head.

“Tell me the truth!”

“OK, one person got, like, all shaky and stopped taking them. It’s not even the same thing you’ve got. They got better. You’ve got some progressive thing.”

Julian let Spiv go, since in any case, his hand was tired from grasping Spiv’s collar. He could feel himself stooping but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. He repeatedly pulled himself out of the stoop only to find himself doing it again a minute later.

“Fine.” he said.

“We OK?” said Spiv.

Julian smiled as best he could, although his face felt stiff.

“Of course we are. Sorry, I’m just stressed. I really need to find a way to relax for a bit. Dealing with that old cow drives me nuts, and now I’ve got the shakes as well. Tell you what, a friend gave me something last week. A free gift for services rendered. I think it’s MDA. Would you try it with me?”

“Sure,” said Spiv, relieved. “Let’s do it.”

They sat down and Julian took two pills from his pocket. He handed one to Spiv.

“How long does it last?” Spiv asked.

“Not long,” said Julian. “Short-acting. Comes on pretty fast. Down the hatch!”

Julian threw the pill down his throat and swallowed it. Spiv did the same.

They chatted about random topics for half an hour before Spiv began to feel distinctly ill. Soon he was doubled over in pain.

“Call an ambulance!” he said to Julian.

“It’ll pass. Relax. You’re just having a bad reaction.”

For another fifteen minutes he strung Spiv along, persuading him that the pain would soon go. Then Spiv fell onto the floor while trying to get to his phone, and he stayed there, saliva pouring from his mouth, his legs twitching.

He tried to say something.

“What?” said Julian. “What’s that, Spiv?”

“You’ve poisoned me,” gasped Spiv.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Julian. “Teach you a lesson, old boy. No hard feelings.”

He stood over Spiv for another ten minutes, until Spiv lapsed into unconsciousness. Then he poured himself a shot of vodka and sat on Spiv’s sofa. Another ten minutes passed and he checked Spiv’s wrist. No pulse.

Julian found the walk back to his car onerous. His legs just wouldn’t cooperate. He kept almost falling face forwards onto the pavement. He found himself taking rapid, short steps, just to avoid overbalancing. Everything was stiff.

When he finally sat in the driver’s seat of the Porsche, he wondered whether he’d be able to drive back to Sarah’s house. In the end he managed it, swapping the Porsche for the Polo along the way, but only by stopping frequently and taking an extra L-dopa.

In the weeks after that he assiduously fed Sarah the doped chocolates. She shuffled around painfully, her voice almost a whisper.

“What a pair we are!” she said to him.

“Yeah,” said Julian miserably.

“Let’s have a cup of chocolate,” she said.

He threw himself onto the sofa. His hands were trembling and one arm kept moving about uncontrollably, as if trying to dust an invisible spider’s web from his face.

“OK.” he mumbled.

The following day, Julian woke up paralysed. Everything was stiff and weak. For two hours he tried to cry out. Time seemed to pass in disconnected jerks.

He wasn’t sure what the time was when Sarah shuffled in.

“Oh no,” she mumbled, her head weaving about uncontrollably due to the L-dopa, her posture horribly stooped. “Poor Julian. Don’t worry, I’ll call a doctor.”

He gazed at her with wide, terrified eyes.

“In an hour or two,” she added.

Then, suddenly, she stood up perfectly straight, her head stopped bobbing about, the tension seemed to completely leave her body, and she said, in a calm, clear voice, “Do you know, I feel much better all of a sudden.”

She flexed her fingers, holding her hand out.

“It’s a miracle! I’m cured!”

He tried to say something, but he could hardly get the words out.

“What’s that Julian?” she said.

“You did this to me!” he gurgled.

“I only fed you your own chocolates, Julian,” she said. “Every cup of your hot chocolate was made with nothing but your own produce, and a little flavouring. Did I mention I took acting classes when I was young? I always knew they’d come in handy. Ray was a doctor, you know. He died twenty years ago, but I thought I’d bring his death forward a bit to make it all the more convincing. After all, vulnerability was what you were looking for, wasn’t it, Julian?”

She leaned over and put her face close to his.

“You can use undetectable poisons, Julian, but you can’t hide the corpses. I know exactly what you’ve been up to. I suspected even before Brigitte died. Sadly, I wasn’t quick enough to save her. Oh, don’t worry, Julian, I shan’t go to the police. Spending the rest of your life as a living corpse will be more than punishment enough, I think.”

In this story an Italian priest performs bizarre unholy experiments in the crypt of his church, involving apparently alien creatures.

I began attending church after my wife died. She was very ill for five years and by the time she died, I was already a complete wreck from years of nursing her and helplessly watching her suffering, even aside from the bitter sting of her passing.

The people going in and coming out of the church always looked so happy. I wanted some of that.

That probably explains why I, an avowed atheist, began going to Sunday mass.

I wasn’t curious. I didn’t want to explore how I felt about religion. I was just gravitating towards something cheerful, like a starving man gravitates towards food.

Unless you’ve experienced it, you can’t imagine what it does to you, to watch someone you love deeply gradually deteriorate and die over a period of years, all the while in terrible worsening pain.

The congregation of St. Marco’s was a youngish crowd, which was weird considering the church’s remote location, nestled in the mountains. They came from miles around to attend the Sunday service.

Perhaps I first went there out of curiosity as much as loneliness. By then I was completely fluent in Italian. Our Tuscan dream had died with my wife, but I had no particular inclination to return to England.

I saw immediately, sitting there on the uncomfortable hard wooden bench, why the church was drawing such a crowd. The priest was a mesmerising speaker.

Something about him suggested a degree of nervous exhaustion, and yet during his sermons, that entirely disappeared, to be replaced only with a boyish enthusiasm.

Certainly, strong Christian themes underpinned his sermons, but his sermons ranged far and wide over an incredible array of topics. I was sure he had undergone scientific training of some kind, because he spoke eruditely and accurately on everything from evolution to the theory of relativity to Malthus and nitrogen fixation, and somehow tied it all brilliantly to his Catholic faith.

Once I’d heard him speak, I never missed a Sunday mass—except once, when I was ill with food poisoning. If more priests were like him, I thought to myself, the churches would all be full.

Did listening to his sermons deter me from atheism? Yes and no. His religion still sounded quite crazy to me. I can’t help that. It’s not a judgement upon its practitioners. On the contrary, I have every respect for them. It’s simply a description of the feeling the religion conjured within me. I will admit, however, that Padre Montecchio succeeded in opening my eyes to the fact that materialism is not without its flaws and may well be deeply lacking as a complete explanation for life and the universe.

I had been attending the church for perhaps five or six months when I finally understood, from talking to other members of the congregation, that the church was technically not, strictly speaking, Catholic.

That is, while Padre Montecchio espoused a faith that to me appeared indistinguishable from Catholicism, in fact he was theoretically independent of the Catholic hierarchy, at least to some extent, and the church building itself was owned by an obscure trust of some sort.

And yet, Montecchio’s church did somehow fall under the purview of the Catholics, and a bishop visited the church from time to time.

Even now, the situation isn’t completely clear to me.

I never exchanged more than a few words with Montecchio himself.

That is, until after the evening of Friday April 5th, 2013. I made a careful note of the day in my journal, which my wife had persuaded me to keep.

I was out walking on a misty evening around dusk, when I happened upon an astonishing sight. Padre Montecchio was running across the field, dressed in typical priestly robes, attempting to catch a creature that was scuttling along with impressive speed. The creature was heading almost in my direction.

At first I though the creature to be a dog or perhaps a pig, but as I began to run towards it, I realised I absolutely couldn’t tell what it was. I began to think it might be a small deer, but it wasn’t that either. I jumped on it and caught hold of it, then when I actually looked at it, I received a terrible shock that caused me to drop it in alarm.

The creature indeed resembled a dog somewhat, and was covered in wiry black hair, but it had six eyes and no nose. Two large black eyes were in the centre of its head above a wide, curved mouth; there were two smaller eyes above those, and two more eyes at either side of these. The mouth opened to reveal surprisingly human-like teeth. When I dropped it, it immediately tried to run off, but Montecchio caught it with a net.

“Thank you.” he said to me.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s from Peru.” he said. “A kind of aquatic monkey. They’re happier in the sea.”

And with that, he hurried back to the church.

The creature was clearly not from Peru and it clearly wasn’t any sort of monkey, aquatic or otherwise.

After that I began to keep a careful eye on Montecchio, and I spoke to him whenever he’d allow me a little of his time. He was up to something weird, and I wasn’t sure what. I wondered if it was possible that he was participating in some kind of strange genetics experiment. That seemed the best explanation. Perhaps he had a friend who happened to be a scientist and he was looking after this scientist’s creations, presumably in the back of the church somewhere, or the crypt.

I saw him chasing creatures across the hillside a couple of further times. What they were, or where they came from, I couldn’t imagine.

Among the congregation at the church was a man I disliked intensely. The only people who did like him were the elderly ladies whom he was always buttering up, and there were rumours that he’d persuaded more than a few of them to add him into their wills.

His name was Adelmo and he always took care to dress imaculately, and was always surrounded by an adoring crowd of elderly women. His wife hung around in the background and often seemed to have bruises on her face, which she explained by telling people that she was clumsy and prone to falling down the stairs, but the rumour was that Adelmo had a vicious temper.

Naturally the old ladies denied this vigorously if you so much as approached the topic even very indirectly. They knew of the rumour and felt that it was put about only by people who were jealous of Adelmo’s success. Adelmo certainly seemed wealthy by local standards, and lived with his wife in a large well-kept house in the village.

The couple had several grown-up children who lived in Milan and Rome and visited them very infrequently.

As it happens I received direct confirmation of the rumours swirling around Adelmo one evening when I happened to pass his house on one of my evening strolls. I distinctly heard shouting from within the house; the couple were in the middle of some sort of argument, but Adelmo’s wife, Chiara, sounded like she was justifying herself or pleading with him rather than attacking him. I paused for a moment and distinctly heard her cry out as though he had hit her.

The episode left me with an increasing feeling that Adelmo really needed taking down a peg or two. What fairness is there in life if a man like him can have a gaggle of old ladies fawning over him and probably leaving him money in their wills, when at the same time he’s brutalising his wife?

No-one in the village seemed able to tackle him about his behaviour. After all, the old ladies wielded considerable influence and he buttered them up expertly.

I mention this man because Montecchio and I were soon to get mixed up with him in a very unpleasant fashion, ultimately resulting in Adelmo’s life taking a very unexpected turn.

About a month after I’d helped Montecchio catch the creature, I happened to visited the old church in the evening while on one of my strolls. I had—and really still have—no idea what priests do in the evening, and whether they are likely to be found in their churches or not, but for some reason I had the idea that the church was quite empty.

I went in thinking I’d sit for a bit and see if I could hear any odd sounds. If Montecchio spotted me he’d naturally just assume I was doing a quiet bit of praying or contemplation.

For a while the church was silent. I sat there for perhaps twenty minutes. Ordinarily, if there’s no service on, the most I can stand on those uncomfortable pews is about half an hour, so I was reaching the end of my patience with it, my back already complaining vociferously.

Then I heard a shout, and a terrible inhuman wailing. This latter noise completely set my nerves on edge. I had never heard anything quite like it. It sounded like some obscure rainforest animal being tortured.

I was sitting there frozen, wondering what to do, when a door burst open somewhere to the side of the church and a thing emerged from it.

I don’t know what this thing was. I still don’t know. In colour it was a pinkish-white, with some portions veering towards red. It was about the height of a short human being. I can say that it definitely had two legs, which were short and stubby and immensely thick and wrinkled. Above that were a mass of things that looked like immensely long teeth, topped with two enormous red-rimmed eyes, of a pale pink colour. Truly a grotesque sight.

I was immobilised by fear and shock, unable to rise to my feet as it scuttled towards me, those massive stubby feet pounding the floor.

Then Montecchio emerged behind it wielding a double-barrel shotgun, and shot the thing in the back. It emitted one enormous last shriek and fell on its face, its momentum carrying it forwards a few feet, the teeth-like things making a clinking sound as they hit the stone floor.

Then, finally, I was liberated from my state of shock and I sprang to my feet.

Montecchio saw me and froze.

“I know how this must look.” he said.

“What, in the name of God, are you doing back there with these creatures?” I asked, my words amplified by my emotional state, and by the echo of the church. It’s fair to say that I was absolutely horrified and felt a kind of righteous anger that seemed to emerge spontaneously and uncontrollably in me.

“It’s nothing.” he said. “Please, don’t tell anyone.”

He lowered the shotgun and began to examine the beast.

“I demand to know what’s going on here.” I said, and I added something about informing the police.

My own words didn’t make much sense, even to me. I’ve no idea what I would have said to the police, or whether the whole thing was even a police matter, but the sight of the creature followed by Montecchio and his gun and the whole thing preceded by that unearthly shriek, had absolutely unhinged me.

He sighed, and rubbed the side of his head with his hand, as if wrestling with strong emotions.

“Very well.” he said. “First, can you help me get this thing back downstairs?”

“Downstairs?”

“We need to take it back to the crypt and send it back where it came from.”

For a moment I thought to question him further, but then I said, “Va bene” and together we began to drag the thing into the side room.

It was tremendously heavy. To get it down the stairs we had to attach ropes to the legs, so we could drag it down. The far end of the crypt was curtained off, I noticed, with black velvet curtains.

After we’d finished getting it down the stairs, we had to go back and collect a whole bunch of the teeth-like protuberances that had broken against the stone stairs on the way down. I noticed they were hollow, and the insides of them were a faint pinkish colour.

The worst thing about the creature was its enormous lidless eyes. They gave me quite a few nightmares in the weeks that followed.

“What you’re about to see is an abomination.” Montecchio said to me. “It shouldn’t exist, but it does. The guilt is mine. I’m unable to undo what I’ve done.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, and I would have added “man” for emphasis if we’d been speaking in English.

He went over to the curtains and pulled a cord at the side. They swept back to reveal what I can only describe as a hole, except it seemed to hover in mid-air. Inside the hole I could see only vague twisted shapes, resembling the branches of dead trees and the dim outlines of rocks.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I created it.” he said, and he gestured at the surroundings of the hole. Only then did I properly notice a substantial collection of electronic and mechanical apparatus.

“You know, there’s a long tradition of clergy discovering things.” he said. His voice was uneven; his tone was that of a man trying to justify himself. It was as if he was confessing to a murder. “Bacon, Zamboni, Mendel, Copernicus—well, there are many of us.”

“And what have you discovered, exactly?” I asked, bewildered.

Here his natural enthusiasm began to take over; the same enthusiasm that I had been so impressed by in his sermons.

“You see, I became obsessed with metaphysics. I became convinced that Hume was wrong, but I wasn’t convinced by Berkeley either, and Kant did not provide me with salvation. All of them were working without the benefits of modern physical theory. For a while I was taken in by solipsism, but then I hit upon it—the solution to the metaphysical dilemma. I sought to test my theories—of course I did—and I purchased the necessary apparatus with some money that had been left to me. I spent not a penny of church funds on my research, I assure you.”

He was working himself up marvellously, and I hadn’t the heart to interject, although I badly wanted him to explain the mysterious hole that inexplicably floated right in front of us, or the hideous creature that we’d just dragged down the stairs. The matter of whether he had or hadn’t spent church funds on whatever this was seemed rather insignificant to me.

“I began to think that space itself is an illusion. We are not in a simulation, no—that’s an absurd idea—but space is not what it appears to be. Vast distances and the microscopic—they are one and the same! Perhaps my ego ran away with me. I believed I was doing the work of God!”

Now he adopted a kind of desperate imploring tone. I was beginning to worry that he might suddenly attack me. He seemed awfully upset about something, to the point of being more than a little deranged.

“I believe I alone have solved the fundamental problem of metaphysics; the question of whether a tree that falls unobserved really falls or not. But—”

He paused, almost on the verge of tears.

“I made a terrible mistake in my work. Hubris! Certainly I am guilty of that. I beg God for forgiveness every day! May God’s mercy pardon me from this mortal sin! I have opened a portal to Hell itself, and I can’t close again!”

For some moments I remained silent as he wrung his hands and wiped tears from his eyes.

“A … portal to Hell?” I said faintly.

“As good as.” he said. “At least, a portal to a distant world that appears inhabited by the most grotesque demons. It may be—one can only hope—some sort of distant planet, with little real metaphysical significance. Only, I can’t figure out how to seal the thing up. It’s feeding on itself. It’s self-sustaining. Oh! We have to throw this vile creature back into it. Will you help me?”

“Let’s do that now and we’ll talk about it later.” I suggested.

Together we attached ropes to the thing’s head, if it can be called a head, and then swung it back and forth until we could gather the necessary momentum to swing it clean into the hole. I heard it land on the other side with a crunching of its sabre-like exterior teeth, or whatever they were.

“Let’s go to your house.” I said.

“At any moment something else could get out!” he said desperately.

“Leave it for the moment.” I said, ushering him away from the hole.

I closed the curtains and led him, protesting, up the stairs and back to his house, which was a thing of quite ancient construction, behind the church.

There, he sat down on an old sofa, quivering. I had the sense of a man absolutely at the end of his tether.

There had been times, during his sermons, when I had suspected that the man carried some terrible burden, but on the whole he had been doing a remarkable job, I realised, of presenting a front to the world.

“Do you have anything to drink?” I asked. “I mean, alcoholic?”

“Only the communion wine.”

“That’ll do.” I said.

I poured us both a glass, since I also was feeling distinctly on edge. The portal had been quite the revelation.

“Now, you’re telling me, you performed some kind of research in physics, and you’ve opened some sort of portal to a distant planet, and you can’t close it, and things keep coming through it?”

“Exactly.” he said, drinking the wine gratefully.

“These things, are they dangerous?”

“They took my dog.” he said. “Poor Mavi! Probably it’s only a matter of time till they kill a person. I can’t control them. I keep chasing them down. I’ve secured the church but they’re ferociously intelligent. They alway find a way —”

He was working himself up again.

I made shushing sounds, as if talking to a child.

“It’s OK.” I said. “I’m here now. I’ll help.”

“Will you?” he said, clutching suddenly at my arm.

“Of course.”

“Thank you, my friend, thank you.”

Unfortunately, no means immediately suggested themselves by which we could close this wretched thing. I made numerous suggestions, ranging from dousing it with water to lighting a strong fire underneath it, and even to burning down the entire church, and he assured me he’d already thought of those things and nothing would work.

Finally I proposed what I thought was a very reasonable plan: we would simply brick the crypt up. But Montecchio was worried about any delivery of bricks attracting attention and wouldn’t agree to it. After a lot of debate I persuaded him that we could seal up the crypt just using stones and cement. The stones could be collected discretely from the nearby hillside, where there were plenty, and the cement would only require that I go and purchase a bag of cement powder in the town. No-one need ever cotton on to what we were doing.

Montecchio stressed about the bishop arriving and asking about the crypt, which sounded unlikely from what I could understand about this bishop. In any case, as far as I could work out, this bishop had no real authority over Montecchio or his church. Montecchio consistently refused to clarify the exact nature of the connection between his church and the Catholics, so I could never be completely sure about it.

In the end I convinced him that, were that to happen, he could just tell the bishop the crypt roof had fallen in, and he’d bricked it up for safety. At worst that would attract a mild censure for not going through proper official channels, if such channels even existed.

After that, every time I went on an evening stroll, I would fill a backpack with stones from the hillside and take them to the church, where we piled them up in preparation for walling off the crypt. Often I’d only fetch only one single large stone, but I figured that, over maybe six months, we’d accumulate enough of them to do the job.

I took care to avoid people and I was never asked where I was going in the evening with a heavy backpack. Usually I went after dark, using a head light on a strap around my head so I could see where I was going.

When we estimated we’d collected half the stones we needed, we built half the wall. Then when we’d collected half of what we still required, we built another quarter. We had three-quarters of a sturdy wall and everything was going well … until it wasn’t.

I arrived at the church one night after dark with my backpack filled with stones, my head lamp lighting the way, and I was about to go in, expecting to find Montecchio waiting for me, when I was stopped short by a voice.

“There are some strange things going on around here and I’d like an explanation.”

It was Adelmo. It turned out that he’d spotted Montecchio chasing some monstrosity across the hillside one evening—mercifully the creatures from the portal at least seemed averse to light and had never got loose during the day—and had begun snooping around. He’d observed me collecting stones and taking them to the church, and now he wanted answers.

All of this he gave me to understand in short order, finishing with, “Well?”

“None of it’s any of your business.” I told him.

“I should say it’s more my business than your business.” he said. “You’ve been here less than two years, haven’t you? I’ve been here closer to threescore and ten.”

The threescore and ten bit is the closest I can get in English to the odd phrasing of the words he actually uttered, which I recognised as a reference to the 90th Psalm, quite typical of the pompous way he had about him.

“That still doesn’t make it your business.” I told him.

“Let’s go inside and ask the Padre, shall we?” he said, his voice all smug and oily. How I detested the man.

“Let’s not.” I said, but he pushed the door of the church open, and I had no choice but to simply follow.

My heart almost stopped when I saw what was inside. There was Montecchio, and he was standing over the corpse of a creature he’d shot, looking down at it, while it jerked spasmodically, gradually dying.

The creature resembled a giant spider, half the height of Montecchio himself, except its legs resembled the legs of a crab. It was a revolting off-white in colour and it had no discernible head, but only eyes arranged all around its circumference.

Montecchio jumped when we came in.

“It tried to eat me.” he said, as if that explained everything, and gave the creature a powerful kick, flipping it onto its back.

On its underside was a kind of octagonal mouth, eight saw-edged triangular sections meeting in the centre, opening and closing with a horrible clicking sound.

Adelmo paled.

“I’m calling the police.” he said.

“No! Please!” Montecchio shouted, as Adelmo turned to go back outside. “Wait!”

Adelmo wasn’t waiting, but Montecchio hurried over to him and grabbed him by the arm.

“Get off me!” Adelmo shouted, in a tone of voice a teacher might have used with a child exhibiting extremely bad behaviour.

I stepped swiftly between Adelmo and the door.

“At least give us a chance to explain.” I said.

“Get out of my way.” he said.

“I won’t.” I told him, and for moment I thought he was about to hit me.

“Let us explain, Adelmo.” said Montecchio. “After that, if you still want to go to the police, we won’t stop you.”

“You can’t stop me.” said Adelmo, outraged by the suggestion that we even had the power to stop him going to the police.

“Exactly.” I said, hurriedly. “We can’t stop you. We just want you to have all the facts.”

“Very well, get on with it, then.” he said.

We had no choice. We took him down to the crypt and explained everything to him.

For a man who prided himself on his supposed Christian charity, Adelmo surprised us with his nakedly hostile tone. He wasn’t understanding at all.

“I’ve always had my doubts about you, Montecchio.” he said. “I shall have to report this to the church authorities and I’ve no doubt they’ll finally replace you. This is an egregious and heinous misuse of church property.”

Privately I wondered whether Adelmo understood the quasi-independent status of Montecchio’s church. I certainly didn’t.

“I was only doing a little research.” Montecchio protested. “It got out of hand—that’s my fault—but my work could have benefited the whole of humanity. It still could.”

“And you a priest.” said Adelmo. “I’m sure the bishop will be delighted when we explain all this to him. I’ve certainly never heard of a member of the clergy who behaves like this! Absolutely pathetic.”

His tone was sarcastic and mocking.

“I’m uncovering the work of God himself!” said Montecchio, tears in his eyes. “There is nothing unchristian about my work!”

The two stood there arguing, Adelmo increasingly insulting and sarcastic, poor Padre Montecchio pleading with him desperately to keep the whole thing a secret.

Meanwhile I heard an odd clumping sound emerging from the portal, like the footsteps of a large animal. I tried to warn them but they were so wrapped up in their argument that they paid me no attention. I began to back away and I urged Montecchio to do the same, but he only shouted “un attimo!” at me and carried on trying to defend himself.

I couldn’t actually see anything through the portal so I thought perhaps it often made such noises, and I was worrying unnecessarily, but then—quite suddenly, an enormous white tentacle covered in reddish suckers shot out and wrapped itself around Adelmo’s head, and began dragging him into the portal.

We tried to free him, fruitlessly. The thing was immensely strong. Adelmo made a terrible shrieking noise; I think the tentacle was stinging him. It was covered in small barbs in-between the suckers. We wrestled helplessly with the thing, getting stung quite a bit ourselves, as it dragged him into the portal. Montecchio discharged his gun directly into the portal but the result was only a terrible trumpeting sound, and the tentacle didn’t relax at all; in fact it only tightened on Adelmo. Montecchio hastily reloaded and positioned the gun to try to shoot at the tentacle itself, but it retracted abruptly, pulling Adelmo clean into the Hell-world.

He carried on shrieking from the other side, but all we could see was some faint dark shapes.

“We have to go in and help him!” said Montecchio.

“We can’t go in there! We’ll never get back again!” I told him. “There’s no point three of us dying instead of one!”

I’ll admit my attitude was probably coloured by my dislike of Adelmo. I wasn’t going to risk my life to save that miserable old charlatan.

“I’m going in!” said Montecchio, and he stuck the gun in a holster on his back and backed up so that he could take a run at the portal and jump into it.

“Don’t do it!” I implored him. “You’ll die in there!”

He ran at the portal nonetheless. Just as he was about to spring into it, another creature shot out of the portal and landed on Montecchio, knocking him off his feet.

“Mavi!” he exclaimed.

The creature was none other than Montecchio’s lost dog, which some unholy beast or other had dragged into the portal months earlier.

Mavi seemed surprisingly well-fed and there was blood around his mouth, so I gathered he had managed to hunt quite effectively over there. He and Montecchio made a tremendous fuss of each other, Montecchio having apparently forgotten about Adelmo in the heat of the moment, Mavi yapping and wagging his tail like a lunatic.

Then a strange fizzling sound arose from the portal, like something from a firework display, causing all of us, Mavi included, to jump back away from this new potential horror.

Mavi began to bark crazily, all his hair standing up.

At first I wasn’t sure if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, but soon there could be no doubt about it: the portal was steadily diminishing, shrivelling up. As we watched, it gradually shrank until it completely disappeared with one final anticlimactic pop.

Adelmo, needless to say, was lost forever.

The police investigated, and in the following days a huge search was initiated, complete with a helicopter and over fifty volunteers. We admitted Adelmo had visited the church, but we told the police and everyone else that he’d left again and we hadn’t seen where he’d gone.

This was technically true, and so Montecchio felt that God would understand the slight deception.

The fact is, people go missing all the time in the mountains. A man can set off on an evening stroll, intending only to take a path he’s taken many times before. Then perhaps he decides to take a side-route, and somewhere along the way he stumbles and falls into a ravine. He tries to climb out, but he’s injured, and in the end he gives up and passes out.

A search party can pass within metres and not find his body, covered by vegetation.

Within weeks, animals have consumed his flesh and scattered his bones and clothing, and anything that’s left of him quickly gets buried in the forest floor.

It happens all the time, so no-one was really all that surprised by Adelmo’s complete disappearance. It was unusual, yes, but impossible? No.

Montecchio wanted to get rid of his apparatus and give the research up, but I persuaded him that he should continue. His research really could benefit all of humanity. And after all, if Mavi had reappeared, perhaps one day we might be able to get Adelmo back also. Not that I really want him back, if I’m honest.

At any rate, to this day Montecchio tinkers with his apparatus in the crypt. We have built a strong wall of stone and cement, with a locking metal hatch, just in case he accidentally opens another Hell-portal that he can’t close.

Frankly, the chances of ever retrieving Adelmo, or even his corpse, seem remote. Perhaps it’s better that way. His wife seems happier without him, and I’ve noticed her children visit her more often now.

The following is a dramatised account, admittedly, but entirely based on recordings that were made at the time, alongside eyewitness testimony.

The first thing I did was to assemble a team.

Harry Rickman was an obvious choice to lead the team. He was quiet but effective; a shortish man with a little black moustache, very decisive. Also, Zara Feldsmar. Tall, with silver streaks in her blonde hair, and a very effective leader. I felt that together they had the necessary force of personality to deal with Gadro.

These planetary governors can be hard-nosed; toughened as many of them are by their tradition of fighting: an unfortunate necessity during many of our colonial endeavours.

Aside from those two I hand-picked a bunch of crew members; anyone I though was solid and reliable.

I only added Ilsa Roman as an afterthought. She had been with us for just a year at that point, and I wanted her to get some real-life experience. Several people told me she was wrong for the job; too soft, too idealistic. My argument was, what better way to toughen up than dealing with a recalcitrant and possibly psychopathic governor?

After the whole thing had blown over, I reviewed all the meetings that had taken place on the ship. They were largely uneventful. One in particular stuck in my mind; most of the rest, not so much.

Sven Carr, the ship’s captain was present at this particular meeting, along with Rickman, Feldsmar and Roman.

“I’ve been researching some analogous cases from history.” said Roman. “I’ve produce a dossier.”

She handed folders to the other three.

She proceeded to nervously regale the other three with a whistle-stop history of prison camps, taking in the Spanish in Cuba, the British in South Africa, the Americans in the Philippines, then the Russian gulags, and culminating in the Nazi concentration camps. She also drew comparisons between Gadro’s treatment of the Anaki and the apartheid system in South Africa in the 20th century.

By the time Roman had finished, Feldsmar, tough though she was, had tears in her eyes. Or at least, she apparently wiped a tear from her eye, dabbing at it with a handkerchief.

“You’ve performed your task wonderfully.” she told Roman.

I had to go back over earlier tapes to find the bit where Feldsmar indeed assigned exactly this task to Roman.

“Thank you.” said Roman.

“Gadro will pay for his crimes.” said Rickman, banging his fist on the table, also deeply moved.

“Do we know why he’s set up these camps?” said Carr.

“The man’s sick in the head.” Rickman replied.

“All planetary governors are subject to massive psychological testing before they’re assigned their posts,” Feldsmar explained, “but there’s a loophole in the system. A true psychopath can simply repeat the right answers to pass the tests.”

“In other words, he lied through his teeth on the exams.” said Rickman. “Now he’s committing genocide against an innocent population.”

“I still don’t really understand who the Anaki actually are.” said Roman.

“Gadro won’t release any footage.” said Rickman. “Never mind. It won’t help him. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“The important thing to understand,” said Feldsmar, “is that they were the original inhabitants of Atremka.”

“When humans colonised Atremka,” said Rickman, “the Anaki were hunter-gatherers. Humans came into conflict with them, and eventually reservations were established.”

“Which have now turned into concentration camps.” said Feldsmar.

“Completely illegal under all inter-galactic law.” said Carr.

Soon the ship emerged from hyperspace and began the descent to the planet.

“It’s beautiful.” Roman commented.

Many before her have remarked on the appearance of Atremka from space. It resembles the Earth somewhat, but is a more brilliant shade of blue, which many call azure, although at times, depending on the position you view it from, it’s closer to indigo.

By then Atremka was already old; colonisation occurred more than five hundred years ago. Since Atremka was one of the first extrasolar planets to be colonised, interest in it was initially extremely high, and colonisation proceeded rapidly. Then, with the discovery of many slightly smaller planets, offering the benefits of lower gravity, the focus of attention moved on, and the entirety of Atremka began to resemble an abandoned tourist resort, or some old region on the Earth suffering depopulation.

Many buildings were simply abandoned and left to the elements.

That’s not to say the planet became in any way what you might call “shabby”. On the contrary, the populated areas retained a distinctive beauty, perhaps resembling parts of Spain, Portugal or Italy, but up close one saw how many hotels were closed and how many houses had fallen into ruin.

The ship made landing on the property of Gadro’s villa, in a town called Frith, in the region known as Atruria.

Rickman, Feldsmar and Roman marched up to the door of his villa to meet him, and Gadro emerged with a dazzling smile.

“I assure you, your concerns are entirely misplaced —” he began, but Rickman cut him off.

“You’re running a system of gulags here!” he exclaimed, rather bluntly.

“It’s unconscionable.” said Feldsmar.

“I’d be happy to give you a tour.” Gadro replied. “I think you’ll understand that the camps are an unfortunate necessity.”

“So you admit it?” Feldsmar asked.

“Naturally.” said Gadro. “Shall we begin now, or would you like to refresh yourselves first?”

They replied that they would indeed like to refresh themselves, and Gadro organised temporary quarters for the three investigators and separately for the ship’s crew.

The following morning the investigators and Gadro got into an armoured transporter, open-topped but protected by a powerful force field, and they glided off into the nearest town, Gadro steering via a joystick, sitting next to Roman in the front, while Feldsmar and Rickman sat in the back, like a pair of visiting dignitaries—which is more or less what they actually were.

“I thought we’d chart a course through the town and then—”

“We want to inspect the camps immediately.” said Feldsmar, cutting him off.

“As I was saying, we’ll pass through the town and then make our way to Camp Tiszta, ten kilometres from the periphery.”

“As you wish.” said Rickman, before Feldsmar could raise further objections, since he was actually curious to see the town.

The town itself resembled any old European-style town. As with many towns actually in Europe, the young people had mostly left, leaving behind the elderly and those who, for whatever reasons, enjoyed fewer opportunities.

The centrepiece of the town was an enormous square object, standing on its edge. Some wag had scrawled “abandon hope all ye who enter here” on the plinth on which it stood.

“The portal.” said Gadro, gesturing at it. “The only thing Atremka is still really known for—apart from, apparently, prison camps.”

“I’ve heard about this.” said Roman. “Can it really transfer people across space without a spaceship?”

“It most certainly can.” said Gadro, with a devilish smile. “If you don’t mind being subjected to lethal doses of gamma rays.”

“Has there been no progress on the radiation problem?” Rickman asked.

“Very little.” Gadro replied. “Anyone who goes through it has a ninety-five percent chance of survival …. with medical treatment.”

“And without?” Feldsmar asked.

Gadro smiled icily.

“Essentially zero.” he said.

The transporter flew through streets of dilapidated abandoned houses, interspersed with houses where some proud owner had made a real effort at maintenance, even sometimes decorating the exterior with flowers. Eventually they moved out onto empty roads surrounded by trees and mountains.

After another five minutes they saw it: the high fence that surrounded Camp Tiszta, punctuated with high guard towers.

“Monstrous.” said Feldsmar.

Roman’s eyes were wide, while Rickman held his tongue, his face hardened into a disapproving near-grimace.

“Wait until you see what’s in them.” said Gadro.

At the entrance (consisting of a triple set of gates topped by coils of razor wire), soldiers in dark blue uniforms waived them through, saluting Gadro.

An army transporter floated out in front of them, guns trained on the camp’s inhabitants.

Roman gasped.

“What are they?” she said.

“The Anaki.” said Gadro. “Violent, nasty creatures. We had hopes of bargaining with them but you can’t bargain with an Anak. That part of their brain appears to be absent.”

The Anaki themselves milled around the transporter curiously. Others lounged against the outsides of the tiny box-like houses in which Gadro forced them to live.

“Stop the transporter.” said Rickman. “I want to talk to them.”

“I can’t recommend it.” said Gadro dryly.

Nevertheless, he obeyed, and the transporter came to a halt, floating just above the stony ground.

The Anaki appeared at first glance to consist of nothing but brownish hair: mounds of hair that shuffled to and fro with a curious lurching motion. On closer inspection, as they slithered up to the transporter, each of them possessed four black eyes:, two large central eyes and two smaller peripheral eyes.

“How do they move?” Roman asked.

“They have rudimentary feet underneath all that foliage.” said Gadro. “Usually around eighteen, but the precise number varies. They’re actually capable of fast, smooth movement when they want to be.”

One of the creatures shuffled up to the side of their transporter and Rickman produced an auto-translator.

“Could we ask you a few questions about your life here?” he said.

The translator produced a series of scratchy warbling sounds, and the creature replied in kind.

Then the translator sounded out human speech, the modulated human voice contrasting absurdly with the noises the creature had actually produced.

“Please help us.” it said. “We are being held prisoner here in terrible conditions.”

Gadro rolled his eyes.

“Spare me the amateur dramatics.” he said.

“Silence!” shouted Feldsmar.

“Yes, ma’am.” said Gadro sarcastically.

“How long have you been here?” Rickman asked, and the machine duly produced the appropriate warbling sounds.

“I have been here two hundred years.” said the creature. “Some of us have been here four hundred years.”

“How long do they live for?” Roman asked Gadro.

“As far as I know they’re immortal.” he replied.

The creature’s two central eyes regarded them mournfully.

“They don’t give us enough food.” it said, via the translator. “We are starving. Once this was our planet, now we are living like animals.”

More creatures were shuffling towards the transporter, each of them somehow projecting a curious despondent sadness in spite of their lack of facial features.

“I think that’s enough for the moment.” said Feldsmar, covering her nervousness with a determined, rather harsh tone of voice. “Continue.”

“Very well.” said Gadro, and he pushed the joystick forward.

As they glided off through the camp’s streets, Rickman angrily shouted, “He said you’re starving them.”

“It.” said Gadro. “They’re not human.”

“Human or not, you have to feed them.”

“We do feed them. They receive more food in here than they ever did when they were left to their own devices. If we give them even more food they’ll spawn and soon they’ll be starving again. We don’t have infinite food, unfortunately.” Gadro smiled. “Or fortunately, depending on your point of view.”

“This is horrific.” said Feldsmar, gazing at the seried ranks of boxes in which the Anaki lived.

“What’s horrific about it?” said Gadro.

“These houses don’t even have windows.”

“The Anaki don’t like light. They use their eyes like we use our noses. Too much light bothers them.”

“This is absolutely unacceptable, Gadro.” said Rickman. “What you’ve done here is completely beyond the pale. It’s unspeakable.”

“What do you suggest I do, exactly?”

“I suggest you let these poor creatures out of this disgusting prison camp.”

“That, I do not recommend.” said Gadro.

“We’ll discuss it later.” said Feldsmar. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve seen enough.”

Back at Gadro’s villa, Feldsmar and Rickman rounded on him.

“You are going to dismantle these camps immediately.” said Feldsmar.

“We’ll be making a full report about this to High Command.” said Rickman.

“You don’t understand.” said Gadro. “If I open the camps, they’ll slaughter us.”

Rickman exploded with sarcastic laughter.

“These … people are clearly in a horribly weakened state. Even if they wanted to kill us, which I could well understand after how you’ve treated them, they wouldn’t have the energy.”

“It’s an act. They have plenty of energy, believe me.”

“Have you heard of Hitler, Gadro?” said Feldsmar. “Or Stalin? Have you learned nothing from the lessons of history?”

Gadro rose to his feet to stare out of the window.

“These aren’t people. They’re not human.”

“They’re sentient, intelligent beings; our equals.” said Rickman. “How many camps are there, exactly?”

“Twenty.” said Gadro. “It’s their intelligence that makes them dangerous. That, and their complete lack of interest in human morality. If I open the camps they’ll tear us to pieces without the slightest compunction. As for how I’ve treated them and the supposed effects of it on their behaviour, they were like that to start with. That’s why we created the camp system.”

“Maybe we should find out a bit more about them first.” said Roman suddenly.

Feldsmar and Rickman stared at her incredulously.

When she had recovered from her shock, Feldsmar began to take Roman to task.

“Your job is to support our humanitarian mission,” she said haughtily, “Not to question the very goals of the mission. Have you lost your mind, girl?”

“I’m only saying, the people here understand the Anaki better than we do. Perhaps we should research how best to help the Anaki before we open the camps up.”

“You just blew your whole career.” said Rickman. “Absolutely disgusting attitude. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Have you ever heard such a thing, Feldsmar?”

“Never.” said Feldsmar. “A junior technician questioning her superiors like this? It’s unheard of.”

“At least one of you has a functioning brain.” said Gadro, turning round suddenly. “You think I’m the bad guy here? I’m the only thing protecting you from the stupidity of your own half-baked moral system.”

Rickman jumped to his feet.

“Our half-baked moral system, as you call it, consists of a set of directives developed collectively by humanity with the aim of preventing psychopathic dictators like you from doing exactly this!”

Gadro stared at him coldly, and for a moment they thought he was about to explode with rage. Then he smiled; the cold, cynical smile with which they were by then entirely familiar.

“Humanity has never previously encountered the Anaki. Perhaps your philosophers should have met with a few of them before formulating their principles.”

“Humanity is a rank interloper on this planet.” said Rickman. “They’re the indigenous population. We’ve displaced them. They have every right to be angry, and we have no right to be stuffing them into horrendous prison camps. You disgust me.”

“They’re not the indigenous inhabitants of this planet.” said Gadro. “They’re the species who slaughtered the indigenous inhabitants. At least get your facts straight.”

“Regardless, they’ve been here a lot longer than us.” said Rickman. “There are principles here, Gadro, even leaving aside humanitarian considerations.”

“We have the power to have you removed,” said Feldsmar, “and we will remove you unless you open up the camps. Either you cooperate or we’ll have you arrested and taken back to the Earth for judgement.”

The smile dropped abruptly from Gadro’s face.

“It appears I have no choice.” he said.

“Damn right, you don’t.” said Rickman.

“Can’t we at least spend a few days on further research?” said Roman.

“You shut your insolent mouth, you silly girl.” said Feldsmar, wagging her finger at Roman.

Gadro pulled his communicator from his pocket and spoke into it.

“Captain Appley. Open up the camp. Let the prisoners out.”

The voice transmitted from the other end was incredulous.

“Could you repeat that, Governor Gadro?”

“I said, open the camp. Unlock all the gates. Let them out.”

“With the greatest respect, sir, have you lost your mind?”

“The decision is out of my hands, Appley. Our duty is not to question orders; our duty is to obey.”

There was a pause, during which Captain Appley could be heard breathing heavily. Finally he said, “I’ll do no such thing.”

“Captain Appley, I could have you removed from your post.”

“Better that than let these vermin out. At least then I won’t be held responsible for it.”

“Is that your final word on the matter?”

“That is my considered stance.”

Gadro switched the communicator off.

“I’m afraid my captains have more sense that you.” he said. “I doubt there’s a single one of them who’ll open their gates.”

“Very well, then we’ll go there in person and open the prisons ourselves one by one.” said Rickman.

“Insanity.” said Gadro.

“You’ll do as you’re told.” said Feldsmar. “You will take us to the prison camps. Our crew will accompany us.”

Soon they were heading out of town in Gadro’s transporter, Captain Carr behind them in another transporter, and almost the entirety of the ship’s crew following in another six transporters behind that.

They passed by the portal and quickly left the town behind. Soon they pulled up outside the camp.

Gadro spoke into his communicator.

“We’re coming into the guard house.” he said.

“All of you?” said the bewildered voice of Captain Appley.

“Ten of us.” said Rickman.

“Ten of them.” said Gadro.

The outer gates opened and they filed into a small building at the front of the camp, from where the interior and exterior of the camp were visible, as well as the gates; the guard house benefitted from wrap-around windows made of thick toughened quartz glass.

“How do I open all the gates?” Rickman asked.

“You don’t.” said Appley, turning pale.

“I outrank you.” said Rickman. “Tell me how to open the gates if you want to keep your job.”

Appley turned to Gadro.

“Is this for real?” he asked.

“Absolutely.” said Gadro. “Tell him what he wants to know.”

“Sir, I request permission to have a five minute headstart to go and save my wife and children before the gates are opened.” said Appley.

“Don’t be such a drama queen!” said Feldsmar caustically. “Just tell us how to open the gates.”

“Enter the code 5-1-8-9.” said Appley, pointing at a control panel. “Then flick all the gate switches. Then enter the code again to confirm, and press the red button.”

“Feldsmar, would you like the honour?” said Rickman.

“Is this really a good idea?” said Roman. “With a little more research …”

“I certainly would.” said Feldsmar, and she began entering the code.

Appley ran to the door and bolted out of it.

“Don’t worry.” Gadro said quietly to Roman. “We’ll be safe in here. For a while.”

Feldsmar pressed the red button and multiple alarms began ringing out.

“Let’s go out to congratulate these innocent beings on their release.” said Rickman.

“A wonderful idea.” said Feldsmar.

“My men and I will remain here for the moment, if you don’t mind.” said Carr.

“Nonsense.” said Feldsmar. “You and your men will come with us.”

Carr filed out of the door, following Rickman and Feldsmar, wearing the resigned expression of a condemned man. Roman hung back, hoping they wouldn’t notice her.

From the control room, Roman and Gadro watched as the small crowd of humans went to stand in front of the great mass of Anaki. Rickman held out his arms like a king making an offering to his subjects.

“You are now free!” he shouted.

A group of curious Anaki surrounded him, making hideous flute-like piping sounds.

He smiled, and then quite suddenly a long tentacle with an arrow-like structure on the end of it darted out from beneath the fur of the closest Anak, and embedded itself in Rickman’s skull. His eyes and mouth opened wide, and blood began to pour from his nose.

Feldsmar shouted something and the crowd of humans began to fall back towards the open gates.

More Anaki plunged their thin dart-like tentacles into Rickman’s skull, the tentacles pulsing as blood and liquefied brain coursed through them.

Even inside the control room, the sound of Feldsmar screaming incontinently was faintly audible.

Gadro and Roman watched as the Anaki overwhelmed one of Carr’s men after another. Appley, outside the camp, jumped into a transporter and shot off towards the town at high speed. Carr began firing his laser cannon wildly at the Anaki, killing several, but the Anaki were swelling into an irresistible crowd.

“We have to help them!” said Roman, inside the guard house.

“Do we, really?” said Gadro. “Personally I don’t care if the entire class of senior administrators gets eaten alive one after the other.”

“Do something!” said Roman. “Please!”

“There’s nothing I can do.” said Gadro, with a horrible smile. “Don’t worry, we’re quite safe.”

“Don’t you have a wife or children in the town?”

“As it happens, I don’t.”

“But the people in the town—they’re done nothing to deserve this!”

The smile faded from Gadro’s face.

He ran to the control panel, held a button down and spoke into a microphone.

“Evacuate the town!” he shouted. “The Anaki are loose!”

When he took his finger off the button, Roman noticed his hand was shaking slightly, in spite of his general appearance of composure and self-assurance.

“There must be something we can do.” said Roman.

“Do you want me to kill them?”

Through the window at the side of the guard house, vast crowds of honking, piping Anaki were visible, streaming out of the gates and scuttling towards the town, arrow-headed tentacles waving above their heads.

“What will they do when they reach the town?” Roman asked.

“They’ll slaughter everyone. That’s their way. They don’t understand compassion.”

“Then yes, I want you to kill them.”

“Unfortunately I haven’t the means to do that.”

They stood and watched, Gadro emotionless—or appearing so, Roman horrified, as the nightmarish horde streamed out of the camp in the direction of Frith.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Roman.

“Open the portal.”

“What?”

“Open the portal. They’ll go through it and die from the radiation, won’t they? If it even takes out a few dozen of them, it’s better than nothing. The human inhabitants will know not to use it, but they won’t. Are they susceptible to radiation?”

“Very.” said Gadro, smiling again. “You surprise me, Roman. I like the way you think.”

“Can you do it?”

Gadro took his communicator from his pocket and raised it to his lips.

“Heller?” he said. “Listen, I haven’t time to explain. There’s a vast horde of Anaki coming your way. Open up the portal. Let them die trying to go through it.”

A torrent of outraged indistinct words emerged from the communicator.

“Just do it,” Gadro shouted, “or prepare yourself for death.”

Outside the guard house, Anaki threw themselves against the windows, arrow-headed tentacles clinking uselessly against the strong glass.

Gadro took a bottle from a fridge, removed the cork and began pouring it into one of a pair of glasses.

“Would you like a little wine?” he said. “It’s an excellent vintage. From our own vineyards.”

“You want to drink wine at a time like this?” said Roman.

“We’re stuck here for at least an hour, till they disperse. It may surprise you to learn that I value the calming effect of wine precisely at times like this. Well?”

Gadro held the wine bottle poised above a second empty glass.

“All right.” said Roman.

Not until three hours had passed did the endless stream of Anaki subside to safe levels.

“Let’s go.” said Gadro, taking a plasma rifle from a rack. “Do you know how to use these?”

“No.” said Roman.

He handed her a rifle.

“Pull back the catch, point it and pull the trigger. Don’t wait till they come at you.”

“I can’t kill innocent creatures.” said Roman.

“There are no innocent Anaki.” said Gadro. “You should have seen what they did to the early settlers. They delight in pain and suffering. It’s their nature.”

Outside they made their way to the handful of transporters that still remained in the parking lot, periodically shooting at Anaki stragglers, some of whom scuttled towards them making scratchy flute-like noises.

Once safely in a transporter they drove towards the town.

At the edge of the town they were greeted by a crowd of armed civilians, standing among scattered Anaki corpses.

“Many casualties?” Gadro asked them.

“Probably no more than fifty.” said a tough-looking man carrying a rifle and hung about with various other weapons.

“I issued instructions to evacuate.” said Gadro.

“We’re not going anywhere, Governor.” said the man. “Apologies and everything.”

Gadro smiled.

“You’ve done a great job.” he said.

“Thank you, sir.” said the man.

Soon they were approaching the portal. There they found Heller, the scientist, gazing blankly into the portal. They alighted from the transporter and went to join him.

“Status report, Heller.” said Gadro.

Heller jumped, startled.

“Oh, it’s you.” he said. “Yes, most of them took the bait. I altered the coordinates to the middle of the Sahara. Not much out there. If the radiation doesn’t kill them, the heat will.”

“Well done.” said Gadro.

“You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison.” said a voice.

They turned to see Feldmar, covered in blood, half-staggering towards them.

“I tried to warn you.” said Gadro. “I told you, they aren’t human. They’re ruthless killers by nature.”

“You’re responsible for this mess, Gadro.” she said. “You’re responsible for the deaths of Rickman and most of my crew. I’m making a full report to the High Commission.”

“A few hours ago you were planning to make a full report on me keeping them in prison camps. Now you’re planning to make a full report on me opening one of the camps?”

She stared at him blankly and confusedly.

“Would you like me to open up the other nineteen camps?” said Gadro.

Then Feldmar fell face forwards onto the ground, and remained there.

Heller ran to her and examined her.

“One of them got her.” he said. “Wound in the back of the head. She’s dead. Amazing she didn’t die earlier.”

“Sixty or more humans dead because of her and Rickman’s idealism.” said Gadro. “I won’t be attending her funeral.”

At this point, Gadro ripped the transponder from his jacket, so no more of his conversation was recorded. All governors are required to wear transponders while conducting official business at all times.

As of yet, no action has been taken against him. I have recommended that no action be taken.

He remains as governor of Atremka.

Nor do I find any fault with Roman, whose quick-thinking suggestion saved countless human lives. Over seven hundred Anaki corpses were later recovered from the Sahara. They are being studied.

Sven Carr in the end survived, but refused to return to the Earth, and I have released him from all duties. He is free to remain on Atremka if he so wishes.

Our sense of morality was formulated for humans, via observation of other humans. The fact is, few of us have ever encountered creatures of other species—other exospecies—with human-like intelligence but none of our human traits.

One can only wonder if early humans weren’t perhaps in a similar situation in their dealings with the Neanderthals or the Denisovans.

In my view, Gadro is innocent of wrongdoing.

This ends my report.

This was the fate I very narrowly avoided, and only by facing an even worse horror, which I would never have voluntarily confronted.

In 2007 I received a substantial windfall in the form of a legacy from an uncle who had passed away. To tell the truth, he died screaming and insane in a secure psychiatric facility, but that’s another story. Before his mind had become unmoored, he had built up a little business, the precise nature of which was never clear to me, but evidently it was fairly lucrative.

I decided to use this money to pursue my fantasy of writing a novel while living alone in the countryside for a year.

In those days Britain was part of the EU, so there was no bar to me going and renting a place in the Alps, aside from the language barrier. I flew to Vienna then drove south in a hired car, and spent a month exploring the north of Italy and the south of Austria.

Eventually I found a place to rent, in a place called San Drogone, in Italy. San Drogone was nothing but a tiny village, with a small shop for groceries. The house I proposed to rent was two miles from the village itself; close enough that I could walk.

The road from the village to the house was covered in snow, and my rental car was unable to get up there. I soon turned around, left the car in the village, and trudged up the road through the snow.

The owner arrived on time in a four-wheel-drive jeep. She was a youngish woman by the name of Ilaria, with long blonde hair, as is common in those parts. She had come by the house the same way I’d acquired the money to rent it; via inheritance. She spoke a little English and I’d manage to learn a bit of Italian, and between the two of us we sorted out the rental agreement.

I thought her rather stand-offish at first, but I soon saw that she was not without a sense of humour, yet appeared weighed down by some unspeakable burden or other: I presumed the death of whomever had originally owned the house—I couldn’t quite understand who that was—or perhaps some long-standing illness.

The house was run-down but habitable, and soon I found myself alone in it, with only my laptop computer for company. There was no internet connection and no mobile signal, which was how I wanted it.

A funny thing about the house, was that it was positively plastered in crucifixes. It’s not uncommon to find a crucifix or at least a cross in an Italian house, as I later came to realise, but the quantity in that particular house was outlandish, especially since the owner was relatively young. The Italians are losing their religion like the rest of us Europeans, although the ebb of faith is perhaps less extreme there than in many other countries.

I counted a total of seven crosses on the outside of the house, and twelve inside, many featuring the suffering body of Jesus nailed to them, all rendered in cheap plastic.

My next major task was to get the hired car back to the nearest office of the hire company, which was in a place called Trento. Driving there was easy enough, but then to get back I had to take a train, and then a bus, and walk the final thirteen miles from the nearest bus stop. The route from the nearest town involved a badly-paved road, which turned by degrees into hardly more than a track. In Trento, which sits at an elevation of around two hundred metres, the weather at the end of February almost corresponded to a typical summer’s day in England, but by the time I was within a few miles of the village, I had stepped into conditions that more resembled a Scottish Highland winter, due to the increased altitude.

As I approached the village itself, a large dog came bounding towards me out of nowhere. I’m not especially afraid of dogs but this one was tough-looking and was making a bee-line for me. Just when I thought it was about to fasten its jaws on me, it jumped up at me wagging its tail, covering my coat in paw prints, and I realised it was simply very friendly.

This dog, I later discovered, was named Luca and was owned by a man who lived in the village.

I was about a mile from the village when some local, passing slowly in the other direction in a four-wheel-drive car, stopped and wound down his window.

I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying to me, but he seemed to be trying to tell me that I shouldn’t go any further, but should turn back. I couldn’t make him understand that I had rented a house up there, and had nowhere else to live. He seemed angry. Eventually he gave up and went on his way.

Luca followed me all the way to the village.

Once I’d passed the village and Luca had scampered off back to his owner, I walked the remaining two miles to my house through thick snow. The snow ploughs had only properly cleared the road as far as the village; after that I was on my own. After having already endured this hike the first time I’d arrived at the house, by then I had actually bought cheap crampons, with rubber straps that fixed over my boots, attaching metal teeth to the soles that dug into snow and ice. Snow shoes would have been a much better investment, and I’ve since learned that many people die in the Alps just for lack of them.

Over the following few weeks most of the snow gradually melted away. I increasingly began to explore my surroundings.

I discovered the cave quite early on. It resembled a sort of crack or fissure in the rock, large enough to walk into upright. I started forwards, intending to walk just a little way in, but something stopped me.

It’s hard to describe the sensation that washed over me, quite unexpectedly. I can only describe it as a feeling that something deeply malevolent lurked within that dark crevice. But that hardly conveys it. There was a sensation of profound wrongness, as though I had stumbled upon something completely unnatural; something that shouldn’t exist.

My hair stood on end and I hurried away. Even the sky gave me the creeps after that experience; I became uncomfortably aware of the huge ocean of gasses above and around me, and of my lack of any real insulation from the vastness of the universe above. A kind of agoraphobia, I suppose you could call it, if you had to put a label on it, although I had never previously felt any such sensation.

The feeling persisted somewhat for several days. At night I became unsettled by the quantity of air in the room in which I lay, and I pulled my bedclothes tightly around my head.

Luca appeared periodically at the door of my rented house, scratching to be let in. I figured out that his owner was an old man who lived alone in the village, by the name of Marco. I’d feed Luca some scraps of food and sometimes he came on a little walk with me, happily following me around. Once I discovered who his owner was I’d take him back home after a bit.

He wasn’t neglected by any means, but he had a habit of escaping from the garden he was supposed to guard, and seeking out new friends.

On our second walk together we passed close by the cave, and that was the only time I had seen him frightened. He refused to go anywhere near the cave, and only barked at it with his hackles raised.

I had only been in my new place around a month when something extraordinarily bizarre and horrible happened.

I went out on a walk that was rather longer than usual, exploring the mountains a bit. At a certain point the weather turned, and soon a blizzard was blowing. On my way home I happened to almost pass the cave entrance, and by then the hour was around five and, what with the sun descending behind the mountains and the blizzard, I could hardly see where I was going.

I felt a shiver run down my spine at the sight of the cave entrance, which now struck me as curiously repulsive. Then I heard a bark.

I stopped and listened. Undoubtedly it was Luca, but where was he?

I strained my eyes and ears, trying to shield my face from the driving snow with one hand, and through the snow and mist I thought I saw something standing in front of the cave. Stealing my nerves, I began to make my way towards it.

Incredibly, there was a flimsy wooden cage in front of the cave entrance, and Luca was in it. He was overjoyed to see me. I quickly unfastened the cage door and let him out, and he jumped up and began licking my face.

Since the weather was absolutely horrible, I didn’t feel like taking him all the way home to Marco, and I was wondering if Marco was the one who’d locked him up there, and if so, why? So I took Luca back to my house.

Inside he ran around jumping on everything, creating a terrible mess. I cooked us both some sausages and then he calmed down a bit.

At night he slept peacefully, to my surprise, given his boisterous character.

Around three in the morning I awoke to find a bright light shining through a crack in the curtain. At first I thought a car had somehow got up on the hill and was shining its headlights directly at my window, but then I realised the light was a full moon, almost setting, which happened to have reached the correct position to shine through a gap in the curtains and directly into my face.

I opened the curtains a little and saw a landscape that was hauntingly beautiful. The mist and snow had completely cleared up, leaving a perfectly clear sky. The moon softly illuminated a still, snow-covered terrain, dotted with spruce trees and ending in the mountain range. I was so taken with it that I tried to photograph it before returning to sleep, but my camera wasn’t really up to the job.

The following morning I set out to return Luca to his owner. I can’t say that I really knew Marco, having only exchanged a handful of words with him, but he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d leave his dog in a cage on the hillside during a snowstorm. I hoped to extract some kind of explanation from him using my rudimentary Italian.

When I arrived at his house I knocked on the door but there was no response. I knocked again, thinking he must have gone out somewhere. Then I thought I heard a quiet sobbing. Luca heard it too and he happened to bark, then I heard the sound of Marco positively running to the door. He flung it open, and Luca jumped at him, barking and licking his face. Marco embraced the dog, actually crying.

I tried to explain, in Italian, that I’d found his dog in a cage. He seemed to understand, although I couldn’t be completely sure. Then he showed me his wrists. They had livid red marks on them, as though he’d been tied up. He pulled up the legs of his trousers and there were marks there too, on his ankles.

Needless to say, I was beginning to get a very bad feeling about whatever was happening in this village. He tried to explain but there were too many words I didn’t know. Finally he took my arm and pulled me outside, where he pointed at a house. I understood he wanted me to go there and knock on the door. Feeling as though I was in some sort of weird dream, I did as he bade me.

The house he’d indicated stood near the top of the hill, and was smaller than Marco’s. I trudged up the hill in the snow, let myself in through a little gate, and knocked.

Soon the door was answered by yet another old man. The village seemed to be full of old men living alone, although I had definitely seen women there, and even a few younger people.

This particular man was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, and had a haunted look about him. He spoke to me in Italian and I pointed at Marco’s house and tried to say that Marco had sent me.

When he heard my accent he switched to English, which he spoke with a faint accent that I couldn’t quite place.

“I understand.” he said. “Come in.”

Inside, the house was unlike anything I have ever seen, before or since. The walls were adorned with curious demonic masks, animal skulls, maps, diagrams, and what looked like reproductions of pages from old books, many of them framed behind glass.

“You’ve got yourself in a bit of trouble, I think.” he said, motioning me to site down at a table.

“What do you mean?”

He watched me steadily, apparently trying to decide how much to tell me.

“There are people here who follow ancient superstitions.” he said. “Things that don’t belong in the modern age. The dog was intended as a sacrifice to L’Entità. Now you have saved him. They already suspect. You were seen on the hillside last night. There are some who feel you should be sacrificed instead. Only, they weren’t sure if you had really saved the dog. Now they will know.”

“They wanted to sacrifice Luca?” I said, unable to believe my ears.

“Precisely.”

“To what?”

“To the thing that lives in that cave.”

“What lives in the cave?”

“That, my friend, is a long story.” he said.

We sat in silence for some moments. He didn’t seem keen to tell me much else.

“They tied Marco up to keep him from rescuing his dog.” I said.

He sighed.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. You mustn’t be harsh on them. It’s either an animal, or their sons and daughters. They believe the creature must eat every full moon.”

“Why don’t they give it a chicken or something? Or even better, a mouse?”

“Usually, they do, but L’Entità has been getting restless recently. A girl disappeared. They believe she was consumed. It is no longer satisfied with chickens.”

“What is it? A bear? Why don’t they kill it?”

“I came here fifteen years ago.” he said, apparently ignoring my question. “For forty years I taught at the University of Bologna. I taught myth, legend and folklore. This place has always fascinated me. Nowhere else is such a strong, persistent and definitive myth found. For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, people have believed that something evil lives in that cave. I have uncovered evidence that even the Romans and the Goths knew of it, and feared it.”

“Nothing can live so long.” I said.

“No ordinary biological organism, no. The thing that lives in that cave is not of this Earth. Or if it is, then it was here long before spiritual entities ever took corporeal form and took up residence here.”

I laughed, openly scoffing at his words.

“The universe is larger than you might imagine.” he continued. “Things exist that are incomprehensible to the limited human mind. We are only hairless primates, and we can form only limited conceptions of the world around us.”

“You’re telling me some sort of demon lives in that cave?”

“Ancient peoples would have conceptualised it as such. I believe it is of natural origin, but it has no bodily form.”

“If it doesn’t have any bodily form then how does it eat people?”

The slight smile dropped from his face and his expression took on a grave and serious aspect.

“It consumes them spiritually,” he said. “leaving behind only a useless husk, which it secretes somewhere in the depths of the cave system.”

“This is the most absurd pile of nonsense I’ve ever heard.” I told him.

“Perhaps, but the locals believe it. I suggest you leave here immediately, before they all realise what you’ve done.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Certainly not. I’m a scholar, not a thug. Think of my words as representing important advice in dealing with a somewhat primitive and rather ancient tribe of which you have no real knowledge.”

“I’m not leaving. I have nowhere else to go.”

“Then I suggest you arm yourself.”

Only after I left this man’s house did I realise that I hadn’t got his name, and could have taken the opportunity to at least ask a little more about these local legends. The entire conversation had quickly become so unsettling that I hadn’t really maintained a clear head.

I trudged back to my house through the snow, which was still stubbornly clinging to the mountainside on account of the altitude.

The snow seemed to me to provide a natural defence. I would easily spot any marauding villagers making their way up the track that led there in the kind of large cars that can handle those conditions. The other possibility was that they could walk up, but I’d easily see them coming and it would take them a while. Unless they had snowmobiles I didn’t see how they could possibly reach me quickly.

I still needed groceries. I had to eat. About a week later I made my way nervously down to the village shop, trying to pick a time when I thought it would be relatively empty.

When I opened the door, causing a little bell to ring that alerted them to customers, both the woman who ran the shop and its only customer, an elderly woman, stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me, gawping as though I had three heads.

I gathered up the few things that I needed as quickly as possible. The elderly woman hurried out. The cashier watched me curiously, but pretended to be busy with something every time I almost caught her eye.

When I went to pay it seemed like everything was going to go smoothly, but just as I turned to leave, she caught my wrist and began jabbering at me in a mixture of standard Italian and the local dialect. I couldn’t understand much of it, but it seemed like she was trying to warn me. Her eyes were moist and her tone was imploring. I think she was grateful that I had saved the dog, and afraid for my life. I caught only a few words, like “mostro” (monster) and “sacrificio”. She also used a lot of religious terms: I distinctly heard “Dio” and “Santa Maria”.

I pulled my arm away, telling her “grazie” since I didn’t know what else to say. When I exited through the door she was still half-crying, and imploring me, probably to leave and save myself, in that tone of voice you hear a lot on Radio Maria.

A few weeks passed by uneventfully. I worked on my novel, a gothic horror about werewolves which in the end I was too embarrassed to publish, gazing at the mountains out of the window while I worked.

Then one night I was again awakened by a bright light shining between a gap in my curtains. This time I got out of bed in a great hurry, again thinking the moon was a car headlight and this time thinking the villagers had come for me. Then I calmed down a lot as I realised it was just the moon.

But then a new concern entered my mind. The full moon—wasn’t that when they believed their monster had to be fed? I hurried to the window at the other side of the house and my worst fears were realised. Five or six vehicles were making their way towards the house.

I quickly dressed and gathered together a few things in a rucksack. I would have to temporarily flee into the night until it was safe to return. At least, if there were to be a break in, I’d have cause to call the police.

Unfortunately I misjudged the business. I ran out of the front door, thinking I’d just get out in time, and found myself staring down the barrel of a shotgun, wielded by a flint-faced old codger from the village.

More of them arrived while I tried to reason with him in my poor Italian. Soon I was surrounded by eight old men. They tied my hands behind my back and forced me to walk towards the cave. With a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, I saw that two of them were carrying the same cage from which I’d rescued Luca. Considering the smallness of it, even being locked in that thing would be quite the punishment, monster or no monster.

They marched me to the cave through the deep snow. I kept falling on my face but they yanked me roughly to my feet, jabbing me with the barrels of their guns. They wouldn’t listen to anything I said to them.

There was a brisk wind blowing and snow began to fall again as we walked.

At the mouth of the cave we stopped and they put the cage down a couple of metres from it. Again I felt that odd sensation, as if staring into something wholly unnatural and perverse.

They opened the cage and stuffed me in. The front of it was only secured by a flimsy catch, but with my hands tied, I had little hope of being able to unlock it. I could only hope that once they left me alone I’d be able to roll the cage and smash it open.

But they didn’t leave me alone. They stood back and waited, staring expectantly into the ominous dark depths of that wretched crevice.

I can’t explain what happened next. I became seized with an unspeakable terror, like nothing I’ve ever felt. I had an awful feeling that something truly repugnant was slowly approaching, stumbling and scratching its way towards me inside the inky blackness of the cave. Some inchoate entity of indescribable evil.

Horrible images flashed through my mind; the beaks of repulsive squid-like beasts, surrounded by fleshy tentacles covered in suckers; loathsome half-formed mouths filled with needle-like teeth dripping with blood; disgusting blobs of sentient pus; all lurching and crawling in my direction from the very depths of hell itself, eager to feast on my horror-stricken psyche.

And then I realised, with a sudden terrible shock, that the cage itself was inching slowly towards the mouth of the cave. The snow underneath and around me was gradually being drawn into the cave, like syrup flowing from an overturned jar but in reverse.

The wind reached a terrible howling intensity. I began to shout and scream at the assembled men, forgetting that probably none of them spoke English, begging them to set me free, pleading for mercy. I no longer even knew what I was saying; I only knew that I was scared out of my wits.

As the cage gradually fell into the cave, borne on the unnatural tide of snow and ice, darkness began to close around me. The men moved in closer to observe my fate.

Then there was a terrible and awesome sound, somewhat reminiscent of thunder but far deeper and with a grating, squealing edge on top of it. I saw the men look up in terror. They turned and tried to flee, but a vast slab of snow, sliding down the mountain, buried them in the blink of an eye, simultaneously cutting off what little moonlight still connected me to the ordinary world.

A moment later all was silent; I could hear only my own breathing, and the beating of my own heart. My eyes strained for the faintest glimmer of light. Then I saw it: two yellowish pinpricks in the darkness; two inhuman malevolent eyes.

“Please!” I whispered, my throat so constricted with fear that I was unable to even scream.

It stopped; I could make out nothing of it but those horrid eyes, watching me.

And then I experienced a new and wholly unexpected sensation; one of indescribable relief. The eyes distinctly began to retreat again into the darkness. I can only describe the feeling as one of forgiveness, as if I had committed some awful crime, but a lenient and merciful judge had decided that I was fundamentally of good heart and character, and should be freed rather than hung.

I began to pound at the cage with my back and feet, every which way I could manage in the restricted space, and soon I succeeded in smashing the door open.

For perhaps an hour I remained there, shivering and muttering to myself, yet somehow the worst of the fear had passed. Whatever was in there, it didn’t want me.

Again I heard the curious creaking, rumbling sound that had presaged the avalanche, and a slab of snow fell away from the entrance of the cave, revealing a dim reflection of moonlight on the snow. If my eyes hadn’t been adjusted to profound darkness, I probably wouldn’t have seen it at all.

I stumbled towards it and manage to worm my way out by degrees, slithering out onto the snowfall outside the cave.

How happy I was to be free! I believe that, even after the creature had retreated, I had accepted death, powerless as I thought myself to be, to escape the darkness.

I staggered back to the house through a vicious blizzard, falling over and over again but always staggering back onto my feet.

Once home I was able to cut the ropes that held my wrists with a kitchen knife.

I was deathly cold. I ran a hot bath and sank myself into it as a matter of urgency.

Only when I’d warmed myself up did it occur to me that I should probably contact emergency services, but up there I had no phone signal. A ferocious blizzard was blowing outside and either the moon had set or storm clouds had obscured it.

Nothing could be done until the morning.

I fell asleep in my bed, exhausted.

When I awoke the following morning, bright sunshine illuminated the snow. Rescue teams were already combing the hillside. Someone else must have alerted them.

In the end they made no progress. The bodies of the eight men weren’t found until two weeks later, when the snow had largely melted in the warmth of the spring.

I didn’t go up there again until all the snow had gone. Although I had strangely lost my fear of the cave, having faced the worst and survived, I was nevertheless happy to discover that the mouth of it had collapsed. The cave had disappeared, buried beneath the rocks.

I stayed there for another two years, working on my book. Luca’s owner let me take him for walks in the hills.

There were no more sacrifices.

As for the retired academic, I later discovered his name was Conrad Grohman, and he was an Austrian, having been born just across the border. Soon after the collapse of the cave he left to live in more hospitable climes, somewhere near Treviso.

I’ve tried to find the ancient writings he spoke of, alluding to the thing that lived in the cave, but with no success.

Perhaps it’s for the best.

The forest has been plagued with genuine disappearances over the years, strengthening its ominous reputation.

In 1993, a group of eight children and three adults headed into the forest on a hike from a local school, and were never seen again. No bodies were ever recovered.

In 2002, an experienced hiker and travel writer, Mircea Ionescu, set off into the forest intending to spend three days hiking across a small section of it. He was found two weeks later, terrified out of his mind and utterly insane. He died in 2005 of unknown causes, never having recovered his sanity. It proved impossible to obtain a coherent account from him of what had happened. It has been speculated that he accidentally consumed some poisonous plant or other, resulting in his mental collapse.

The forest’s disturbing reputation repels most people, but attracts others.

I cannot tell you how I came across the following story; only that the time has come to tell it, after a long-held silence.

In 2007, four friends set out to hike across the Codrul al Nerei, following the ridge that traverses the entire forest. All four worked in the biotech industry, in Cambridge, England.

Trevor, large and exuberant, was the most experienced hiker of the four. It was his idea to hike the forest trail. Joe’s experience of hiking, at the other extreme, was little to none.

They departed from a guesthouse in the village of Izvorani at the south-west end of the trail on March 6th, aiming to reach Lupeni at the other end of the trail no later than March 12th.

Initially, Joe found the trail disappointing. After some initially promising views of blue-grey mountains half-covered in snow, the trail ascended into thick scrubby woodland, where the only things visible were low tangled trees and bushes.

“If it’s going to be five days of slogging endlessly along muddy trails, I wish I hadn’t come.” Joe complained, as they sat on a rock overlooking the Nera valley, four hours into the walk.

“Nah.” said Trevor. “It’ll get better. The trees get bigger further along and we’ll be higher up.”

The start of the trail is indeed rather gloomy and monotonous, as many others have noted.

“Four hours and you’re already complaining?” said Owen. “You have to give it a chance.”

“All right.” said Joe. “If Trev says it’ll get better than that’s fine. I just thought it was all going to be like this. Five days of this and we’ll all be insane at the end of it.”

“I quite like it.” said Richard.

“You would.” said Joe.

They had brought two tents, Joe sharing with Richard and Trevor with Owen.

When they made camp for the night, Joe found himself disturbed by the sounds that emerged from the dark impenetrable forest.

“Wolves!” Joe exclaimed. “Listen!”

“They’re afraid of people. Don’t worry.” said Richard.

“How do you know? Are you some kind of wolf expert now? You’ve probably never even been in a forest before.”

“I looked at some guide books.”

“Oh great, guide books, I’m sure they’re definitely tell people if they’re in danger of being eaten by wolves. That’ll really help tourism.”

“I think they would tell people.” said Richard reflectively. “It’s hardly to their advantage if tourists get eaten by wolves.”

“What if they’ve got rabies?”

“They’re not going to get through the tent.”

“A wolf could easily get through a tent.”

“Now you’re an expert on wolves?”

Joe pulled his sleeping bag around his head, listening nervously to the howling.

By the afternoon of the second day, they were almost halfway along the trail and the hike had so far proceeded without incident.

It was at this point, while traversing a narrow path above a nearly-vertical drop of perhaps five metres, that Joe lost his footing and rolled all the way to the bottom. The others quickly found a way to scramble down and join him.

“Are you all right?” said Richard.

“I’ve twisted my ankle.” said Joe, grimacing.

Joe found he was able to stand, but walking was painful.

“Best thing is to force yourself to walk, otherwise it’ll swell up.” said Trevor.

“Easy for you to say!” said Joe, bitterly. “It hurts like hell.”

“We’re not going to be able to do the whole rest of the trail.” said Owen. “We’ll have to find a shortcut or something.”

“There’s no shortcuts.” said Trevor, shaking his head.

Joe was almost crying with pain.

“We’ll phone for rescue.” said Richard. “Owen, you’ve got a phone. Does it work?”

Owen took out his phone, a tiny thing capable only of making calls and sending messages.

“No signal.” he said.

“Has anyone else got a phone?” Richard asked.

No-one else had a phone.

Trevor spent ten minutes trying to persuade Joe to walk until Owen and Richard finally told him that Joe clearly couldn’t walk and it wasn’t fair to keep trying to make him walk.

“We’re going to have to go and get help.” said Owen. “There must be a farm or something somewhere round here.”

“We might be able to get a signal if we go higher.” said Richard.

“Surely it makes more sense to go lower.” said Owen. “The last thing we need to do now is climb further up the mountain.”

The problem of who should leave and where they should go, and who should stay with Joe, was a difficult one to solve, requiring extensive negotiations.

The nearest place that might be inhabited was an anonymous cluster of buildings marked on the map about thirty miles away. It was too far away to get there by nightfall. They had only two tents, and both tents were too small to fit three people in one tent.

Two of them would have to go to find help and one person would have to stay with Joe, but no-one wanted to be left alone with Joe.

Joe was prone to brittle, irritable moods and incessant complaints at the best of times, and now that he was injured, he was far worse than usual. Richard and Trevor knew Joe via Owen, who had once rented a room in a house where Joe also happened to live, but Owen was the least inclined to be left alone with Joe. On the other hand Joe didn’t much like the idea of being left alone with Trevor, whom he found unsympathetic.

In the end Joe was left with no say in the matter, and Richard and Owen headed off together to find the village, while Trevor stayed with Joe. This decision was announced to Joe as a fait accompli.

Richard was no more skilled than Owen in finding his way through the mountainous forest. His experienced of navigating the great outdoors was limited to cycling tours, but he led the way nonetheless, due to his greater decisiveness.

“What we’re going to do,” he said to Owen, pointing at the map, “is head east down this trail here, then cut through the forest till we hit this road.”

“Shouldn’t we stick to the paths?” said Owen.

“Then it’s nearly twice as long. We should at least try to see if the shortcut’s navigable.”

“All right, but let’s try not to get into anything we can’t handle.”

By the time darkness fell, they had covered at least fifteen miles on a trail which, at times was barely discernible.

When they pitched their tent for the night, they must have felt themselves to be far off the beaten track, and really in the absolute middle of nowhere.

It’s impossible to know with any certainty the details of what happened to them after that, but we may reconstruct a plausible sequence of events.

We may imagine that, at night, they lay awake listening to the wolves, which now seemed much closer to their tent than previously.

During the early hours of the morning, when the sky had lightened in preparation for dawn but there was still no actual sign of the sun itself, Richard left the tent for some reason. Almost certainly he simply intended to urinate, some short distance from the tent.

We don’t know whether he sensed the presence of the rabid wolf before it attacked him, or whether the attack came out of the blue. Owen was awakened by the sound of terrified screaming. When he saw what was happening, he immediately went back into the tent to find a knife. Then he bravely ran over to help Richard.

The deranged wolf was so focused on fighting Richard that Owen was able to inflict a mortal wound upon it, but not without sustaining a nasty bite himself, on his ankle.

It was too late for Richard. His wounds were too severe to survive. Half of his face and neck had been partially torn away.

The wolves in Romania are not large and they are usually scared of people, but when infected with rabies, they are capable of inflicting serious damage on a human being.

Owen could only watch Richard die. Probably Richard, if he was still able to speak, told Owen to find the village as quickly as possible and obtain medical assistance. A series of injections can usually prevent rabies from developing in those who’ve been bitten by infected animals.

It appears that Owen survived for two days after this, wandering in the forest, steadily losing blood from the wound on his ankle. Likely he got as far as the vertical cliff edge that crosses their intended route, turned back again, and eventually became hopelessly lost. Cause of death was probably hypothermia exacerbated by loss of blood.

Meanwhile, Joe was becoming increasingly paranoid.

As darkness fell, Trevor made a fire. He and Joe huddled around it for warmth.

“Listen!” said Joe. “We’re surrounded by wolves. I’d be easy prey for them. Maybe we should be in the tent. Do you think they can tear through the tent?”

“Doubt it.” said Trevor. “They’re afraid of people and fire. Don’t worry about them.”

“I feel like we’re going to die out here. I’m going to die, at least. You can walk.”

“Tomorrow they’ll get to those houses, yeah?” said Trevor. “They’ll call for help and probably a helicopter will be here by evening.”

“It’s really stupid that we didn’t bring painkillers.” said Joe miserably. “My ankle really hurts.”

“It’s just a sprain.”

“I think it’s broken.”

“Nah. You’d be in more pain.”

“I am in more pain.” said Joe, tears in his eyes.

The sun had long since set when Joe saw the face in the trees.

“It wasn’t human, Trev.” he said, in a panic. “If it was human, there was something horribly wrong with it.”

“It’s just your imagination. You probably saw a goat or something.”

“It wasn’t a goat!”

“Look, why don’t I go and have a look?”

“Don’t leave me!”

“I won’t leave you. I’ll just go over there a bit and check with the torch.”

Eventually Joe consented to this plan. Trevor scoured the trees in their immediate vicinity with a torch.

“Nothing there.” he said, sitting down by the fire again.

“I know what I saw.” said Joe.

As the evening wore on, Trevor grew increasingly annoyed with Joe’s complaints. He tried to be reassuring, but eventually he snapped.

“If you had just watched where you were stepping, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“It wasn’t my fault. It was just an accident. Anyone can have an accident.”

“I don’t have accidents. You know why? Because I watch where I tread. I’m careful.”

They fell into an outright argument, which ended with Trevor retreating to the tent, announcing that he was going to sleep, and Joe hurriedly dragging himself over to the tent on his knees, not wanting to be left alone.

When the following night arrived with still no sign of help materialising, Joe grew despondent.

“Something’s happened to them.” he said.

“They must have got lost.” said Trevor. “They’ll find their way eventually. It’s not that complicated. As long as they head away from the mountains it’ll be fine. Eventually they’ll reach the valley. There’s villages in the valley.”

“How long would that take?”

“Could be a couple of days in the worst case.”

“We haven’t got food for two more days.”

“We won’t starve to death in two days. Tomorrow morning I’ll fetch more water.”

Three more days went by no sign of rescue, and they were forced to reluctantly, and correctly, conclude that Richard and Owen were dead.

By then they were extremely hungry.

“I’m going to have to go and get help.” said Trevor, as they were sitting by a fire after sunset.

“You can’t leave me here!” said Joe.

“We’ll starve to death if I don’t.”

“People will be searching for us by now. We’re on a well-known trail. People know where we’ve gone. They’ll find us.”

Trevor shook his head.

“We’re not on the main trail.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“I wanted to try something a bit more adventurous. No-one comes down this trail at this time of year, mate.”

“I told everyone we were going along the trail that’s marked on the map. You know, the what’s it called —”

“Yeah, it’s not that trail. It’s not on all the maps. I’ve got a special map.”

“Special map?” said Joe, hardly able to believe his ears. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s an old map used by miners. I gave it to Owen and Rich.”

“So we’ve got no map and anyone who’s looking for us will be looking in the wrong place? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Basically, yeah.”

Joe began crying softly.

“Hey, don’t cry, mate.” said Trevor.

“My ankle hurts and I’m hungry!” said Joe.

Trevor shifted uncomfortably, wondering what to do.

Then the sound of breaking tree branches made them both look up.

“What’s that?” Joe asked fearfully.

“Probably an animal.” said Trevor.

“An animal?”

“A stag or something.”

The thing, whatever it was, stumbled and lurched towards them, until they could make out its outline in the light of the fire and the half-moon.

“What the hell?” said Trevor, and he rose to his feet and scrambled hastily backwards.

In the dim light they saw a figure, apparently human, but dressed in rags and bearing the face of a corpse. Its skin appeared grey and partially rotten. Upon the crown of its head were only wisps of white hair. As it staggered towards them, its head bobbed uncannily from side to side.

Joe tried to pull himself backwards along the damp earth.

The figure stretched out a hand towards them and groaned. They could smell its decomposing flesh.

“Get away from us!” Joe screamed.

The figure spoke.

“I can help you.” it said, coming to a halt a few metres away from them. “I’ve been watching you. You have no food. You’re injured. I can help you.”

“Who are you?” said Trevor.

The figure stood still for some moments, catching its breath. Then it said, “I know my appearance is alarming. I can explain. Don’t worry. I’m not infectious. At my house I have medical equipment and food. I’m a doctor.”

Joe and Trevor exchanged frightened and baffled glances.

“OK.” said Trevor. “Where’s your house?”

The figure turned and pointed into the forest with a quavering index finger.

“How far?” Trevor asked.

“Not far.” the figure rasped. “Not far at all. You can make it there.”

“I’m not going anywhere with that thing.” said Joe quietly.

“We’ve no choice, mate.” said Trevor. “Take a hiking stick and lean on me. You can hop.”

The figure began to shuffle off back into the forest.

“Let me help you up.” said Trevor.

Joe reluctantly allowed Trevor to pull him to a standing position, and they began to follow the figure, Joe hopping and grimacing.

The figure’s pace was slow but even so, with Joe unable to walk properly, they were barely able to keep up with it.

Soon they arrived at a tiny run-down shack in the depths of the forest.

The figure opened the door and went in.

“Come!” it said, as loudly as it could seemingly manage, barely able to speak for wheezing.

Inside, they found the figure sat at a wooden table in the one-room hut. Trevor helped Joe onto an old dusty wooden chair.

The smell of decomposing flesh in the hut was strong but bearable.

“Allow me to introduce myself.” said the figure. “I am Dr. Oldovan. Let me catch my breath and I will bring you food. Then I will fetch medicine for your ankle.”

“What are you doing here in the forest?” Trevor asked him.

“I came here a long time ago, to research the healing properties of certain minerals in the soil. You see, the animals here live an unnaturally long time, and hunters noticed that they showed remarkable powers of recovery from injuries that should be fatal.

“I am one-hundred and fifty-three years old. I myself have been preserved by the remarkable powers of the substance. Unfortunately I have been preserved rather imperfectly, as you can see. I am no longer fit for the company of my fellow human beings.”

“A hundred and fifty-three!” Trevor exclaimed. “Why don’t you share your findings with the scientific community?”

Dr. Oldovan smiled wearily.

“The world is not ready for what I have discovered. Imagine a world filled with people like me. It would not do. Not at all. Now, let me bring you some food. You will find my food perfectly acceptable, in spite of the appearance of the chef.”

He rose unsteadily and went to a stove at the side of the hut, where he began to cook.

“Fresh rabbit stew, with carrots I have grown myself.” he said. “I can heal your injured ankle, but I must ask you one thing in return.”

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“You must never tell anyone about me, or about the substance. Never. The secret must remain here, with me. Can you swear to this?”

“No problem.” said Trevor.

“Of course.” said Joe.

The doctor turned around to face them, leaning back against the bench where he was preparing some kind of hot tea, in mugs that looked home-made.

“I need you both to swear. ‘I will never tell anyone about Dr. Oldovan or the substance’. Say it.”

Joe and Trevor duly repeated Oldovan’s words.

“Good.” said Oldovan.

He brought them steaming mugs of tea, which, in spite of their hesitation, they both found surprisingly refreshing, and a little later he brought bowls of stew, which Trevor pronounced delicious and which even Joe, who under normal circumstances was a vegetarian, had to admit brought welcome relief from hunger.

After they had eaten, Oldovan opened a hatch in the floor and began to unsteadily and slowly descend into a dark cellar.

“My laboratory is down here.” he said. “I will fetch medicine.”

“I’m not taking any medicine of his!” Joe hissed, when they judged Oldovan to be out of earshot.

“If it works maybe we’ll be able to walk out of here.” said Trevor. “Otherwise I’ll have to leave you here while I get help.”

“You can’t leave me with him!” Joe protested.

“Take the medicine then.” said Trevor. “If it works, it could be the find of the century.”

“You can’t tell anyone about it. You promised him you wouldn’t.”

“He’s not right in the head. If he’s really got a drug that can keep someone alive to a hundred and fifty-three, do you understand what that means?”

“Look at the state of him!” said Joe.

“It means we’re going to be billionaires.” said Trevor.

They continued to argue for a few minutes, falling silent abruptly as Dr. Oldovan emerged from the cellar carrying an old glass beaker filled with a milky blue liquid.

He placed it in the middle of the table with an unsteady hand.

“Drink that.” he said to Joe.

Trevor made a face at him in which he tried to convey the idea that Joe would either be staying alone in the forest with only Dr. Oldovan for company, or else drinking the medicine.

“It won’t hurt you. It will heal you.” said Oldovan.

Joe took the beaker, raised it to his lips and, making a sudden decision, downed the contents.

“Good.” said Oldovan. “Now let me show you back to your tent. There isn’t room for you to stay here. I will give you some hazelnuts to sustain you on your journey home. There is a trail near here that leads directly south. If you start in the morning, you will arrive at a village before nightfall.”

Oldovan tottered out of the door and they followed.

By the time they had arrived back at their tents, Joe was already able to gingerly put a little weight on his injured ankle.

Oldovan turned and lurched back off into the trees.

“Remember your promise.” he said over his shoulder.

The following morning, Joe awoke to find his ankle completely healed.

“When this drug is properly commercialised it’s going to make us rich beyond belief.” said Trevor. “We’re talking private jets, sports cars, villas, private islands, even.”

“You can’t tell anyone. He’s right, anyway. Imagine a world where everyone looks like him.”

“Nah.” said Trevor. “We’ll get you home, then I’m coming back here with a team of scientists. He’s no right to keep this to himself.”

“Trev,” said Joe soberly, “you promised.”

“If he’d made us promise to keep a cure for polio under wraps, would you honour that promise?”

“It’s not a cure for polio.”

“It’s better. It’s a cure for everything. For broken ankles. For every disease that affects people when they age.”

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“You can’t stop me. You have no right to stop me, and you can’t.”

After eating a breakfast of hazelnuts, they packed up the tent and began walking back along the path. Soon they found the turning south that the doctor had told them about. They turned off the main track and followed it.

They had walked for six hours and estimated themselves to have reached the halfway point when Trevor began to feel sick.

“Let’s sit down for a bit.” Joe suggested. “Take a rest.”

They sat, but Trevor only felt worse and worse. He gradually turned completely white.

“You’ll have to go on without me.” he said, pale as a sheet. “Get them to pick me up, and arrange a search party for Rich and Owen.”

“You might feel better in a bit.” said Joe.

But then blood began to stream from Trevor’s nose. Trevor wiped it away with the back of his hand, then stared blankly at the blood.

“That old bloke’s done something to me.” he said.

“I feel fine.” said Joe. “Do you think it’s possible he overheard us talking?”

“I —” began Trevor, but then he keeled over backwards.

“Trev!” shouted Joe in alarm.

Trevor’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body began to jerk spasmodically, his neck contorting itself hideously, pulling his head sideways.

Two minutes later, while Joe desperately tried to find some way of helping him, he stopped breathing.

Joe had little idea about any kind of emergency first aid techniques, but he tried his best to revive Trevor. And yet, there was something curiously final and still about Trevor’s body, which remained stubbornly inert, with his head twisted oddly to one side.

Eventually Joe had no choice but to leave him and make his way towards the village.

Five hours later he arrived at a small cluster of houses. No-one there spoke English, but he managed to make an elderly couple understand that there was some kind of emergency, and that he needed a telephone.

Half an hour later a helicopter landed in the village and the paramedics took Joe to show them where to find Trevor’s body. They found the tent and other supplies that Joe had left there, but there was no sign of Trevor.

The bodies of Richard and Owen were found the following day.

Trevor’s body was never recovered.

“That’s him?”

“I know.” said Burrows, sympathetically. “He’s a bit weird but he’s got a fine mind. Only reason he’s not doing my job by now is he doesn’t want it. And because—well, we’ll not go into that. Anyway, have fun.”

Burrows walked off back to his office.

Detective Inspector Beaumont wore brown tinted glasses, had a head of short slightly curly brown hair that looked like it was almost definitely a wig, and sported a stubbly beard, darker than his hair, that had every appearance of being dyed.

He was drinking a coffee with one hand and held an unlit cigarette in the other hand.

Carter walked up to him.

“Sir, I’m the new Detective Sergeant.” he said. “Steve Carter.”

“Oh right, pleased to meet you.” said Beaumont.

Beaumont’s voice sounded like he needed to clear his throat but couldn’t be bothered.

He looked at his coffee and cigarette, trying to decide which to put down so he could shake Carter’s hand, and settled for putting the unlit Marlboro in the corner of his mouth.

Carter noticed his fingers were heavily stained with cigarette tar.

“Anything I can do at the moment?” said Carter.

“Yeah, actually. New case just came in. Come into my office. Second thoughts, I’d better ‘ave a fag first. Let’s go round the back.”

At the back of the police station was a car park, filled mainly with police cars.

Beaumont lit his cigarette and inhaled with evident gusto.

“Only had ten so far today.” he said. “I don’t feel right without my fags.”

“Ten, sir?” said Carter.

“Yeah. What, you think that’s a lot?”

“It’s only eleven in the morning.”

“Fair point, fair point.” said Beaumont. “The thing is, it calms me down. Don’t know if they told you but I’ve got some psychological issues. I’m open about it. I’m seeing a counsellor. Bloody useless, mind. These are the only thing that helps. That and my wife.”

He rattled a pack of Marlboro’s in Carter’s face.

“I see, sir.” said Carter. “Each to their own.”

“You can call me Beaumont. Everyone else does.”

Carter watched as a tabby cat made its way steadily across the top of the high brick wall that surrounded the car park.

“Inspector Burrows said you’d have his job if you’d wanted it.” he said.

“Yeah, probably.” said Beaumont. “Only reason I even accepted Detective Inspector is all the tax the bloody politicians put on cigarettes. Load of parasites, the lot of them. I hate them.”

Beaumont turned and kicked the wall in a sudden flash of anger.

“Parasites!” he shouted.

His face had flushed red.

Carter looked at him with an expression of alarm.

“Sorry, sorry, Carter.” said Beaumont. “It’s the anger. I told you I’m not myself till I’ve had at least a packet. I’m calm now. I’m calm. Tell you what, I’ll have another one quickly then we’ll go to my office and talk about the new case.”

On the way back to his office, Beaumont stopped and poured himself another coffee, which he drank black with seven sugars that he hastily stirred in with a stained teaspoon.

Beaumont’s office reeked of stale cigarette smoke, in spite of the ban on smoking indoors. Six plastic disposable cups stood on his desk, some still with coffee still in them, and three filthy mugs.

“You smoke in here?” Carter asked.

“Yeah.” said Beaumont. “Now, ‘ave a look at this.”

He slapped a photograph down in front of Carter.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” said Carter.

Carter’s eyes widened with shock.

“No blasphemy, if you wouldn’t mind.” said Beaumont.

“What?” said Carter.

Beaumont indicated a crucifix on the wall behind him, which Carter hadn’t previously noticed.

“I found Jesus three years ago when my third wife left me.” said Beaumont.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” said Carter.

“She was found yesterday, in her house on Ferrer Street. Sick b*****d did this to her while she was still alive.”

“Your third wife?” said Carter, suddenly confused.

“What are you talking about? No, I mean the victim.”

Carter gazed in horror at the horrible mess in the photo. It was almost impossible to imagine that the horrific tangle had once been a human being.

“Lived with her husband. Imagine getting home from work and finding this. If anyone laid a finger on my Achee, I’d wring their necks!”

This last sentence was pronounced with considerable asperity.

“Lord help me, I’d make them pay!” said Beaumont, warming to his theme, and he brought his fist down on the desk with a resounding bang.

“Achee?” said Carter.

“Achara, my fourth wife.” Beaumont explained. “She’s Thai. She calms me down. That’s what I need in a woman, someone who can calm me down. So far there’s very little to go on. We’re waiting on the forensic people.”

At that moment the phone on Beaumont’s desk rang. He picked it up.

“Beaumont.”

Carter couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line.

“Really? You’re sure?” Beaumont said into the phone.

When he put the phone down, he said to Carter, “Forensics. Only DNA they found on Mrs. Smith was from ‘er husband.”

“Her husband did this?” said Carter incredulously.

“No.” said Beaumont. “No way.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“He was. I let him go this morning.”

“You let him go?”

“Yeah. No alibi, really, but he didn’t do it.”

“How do you know?”

“Trust me, I’ve got a sense about these things.”

Carter stared at Beaumont, unable to believe his ears. This man, he thought, was clearly a lunatic. How on Earth had he ever been made Detective Inspector? Had he blackmailed someone?

“Let’s go and have a look at the crime scene.” said Beaumont. “I ‘ope you’ve got a strong stomach. They ‘aven’t cleaned ‘er up yet.”

On the way to the crime scene they passed several recruitment posters. The war with China was still raging, and only seemed to intensify with each passing day. The posters featured young men and women who, in Carter’s view, looked like they might have made good flower arrangers or interior designers, but certainly shouldn’t be in an army.

“This goes on any longer they’re going to conscript us.” said Beaumont, grasping the steering wheel with yellow-stained fingers. Beaumont insisted on driving in manual mode, even though the route to Mrs. Smith’s house was fully cleared for self-driving.

An image of Beaumont gunning down Chinese civilians in a blind rage flashed through Carter’s mind, and he shuddered.

The scene at the house was just as hideous as the photograph had suggested. Beaumont, while apparently unaffected by the horror of it, seemed keen to inspect the outside of the house and Carter strongly suspected this was mainly because he wanted to smoke.

“Look at these footprints the boys found.” he said, lighting a cigarette and gesturing with his head.

“He came in through the French door.” said Carter.

“Didn’t just come in through the door. He stood outside the window, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Waiting till her husband went upstairs. Look how deep the footprints are next to the window. He sank into the ground a bit.”

Carter peered at footprints next to the door, directly outside a large window.

“Anyone could have left those. The husband could have stood there to make it look like a break-in.”

“Nah. We checked his shoes. No match.”

“So he was in the bathroom, and he claims he heard nothing, and when he came down, his wife was in bits?”

“That’s what happened.” said Beaumont. “They’d left this door open a crack for some air. Probably checked dozens of houses till he found the right one.”

“How can you be so sure it wasn’t the husband?”

“Instinct, Carter. Here, do me a favour, go inside, draw the curtains and come out again.”

“All right.” said Carter.

When he re-emerged, Beaumont had lit another cigarette and was peering at the window from different angles.

“Have a look and tell me what you see.” he said.

Carter dutifully obeyed.

“Can’t see anything at all.” he said.

“Yeah. You can’t see into the place with the curtains closed. These are good curtains. If I get a chance I might ask the husband where ‘e got them.”

“He must have had his ear pressed to the window. He must have been listening.”

“Then there’d be an ear-print on the window.”

“Isn’t there?”

“No.”

“So, why’d he stand here? And how did he know the husband had gone upstairs?”

“Exactly.”

“The husband did it.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then what?”

“Think about it.”

“I am thinking about it.”

Beaumont smiled enigmatically.

“Let’s head off. I’ve seen everything I want to see. I’ll just have another quick fag first.”

On the way back to the station, Beaumont stopped the car suddenly, tyres squealing, outside a recruitment poster.

“Parasites!” he shouted. “This hacks me right off!”

He proceeded to tear it down, made it into a ball and, taking careful aim, threw it over a nearby wall.

When he got back into the car, he sat there for a minute, shaking slightly and inhaling deeply. He had flushed bright red.

“Sorry, it’s me nerves.” he said. Then, his voice rising to a shout, he added, “I bloody hate politicians!”

And he slammed the steering wheel with his hands.

“Would you like me to drive?” Carter said, nervously.

“No, no, it’s all right, mate.” said Beaumont. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

Beaumont reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of pills. He popped one of the pills into his mouth and washed it down with a bottle of water that he took from the glove compartment.

Gradually he grew calmer.

“I really need to see Achee.” he said. “She calms me right down. What time is it?”

“Nearly one o’clock.”

“Bloody ‘ell. Another four hours then.”

In the days that followed, Beaumont resisted all of Carter’s pleas to arrest the husband.

The second murder occurred three weeks to the day after the murder in Ferrer Street.

The victim was male, aged 33, and had been murdered in his own car. The murderer apparently flagged the car down after dark on a country lane and somehow persuaded the driver to wind the window down, whereupon he stabbed him in the face, likely with a kitchen knife.

All that was bad enough in itself, but the murderer had then removed the body from the car, draped it over the bonnet, and disemboweled it.

It was this last hideous facet of the case that made the police think it might be connected to the earlier murder.

“I reckon we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.” said Beaumont, as he surveyed the murder scene in the now cordoned-off road.

He had a mug of cold black coffee in one hand and a lighted cigarette in the other.

“It’s horrible.” said Carter.

Beaumont sipped his coffee.

Suddenly his radio beeped. Beaumont conversed with the caller for a minute, then said, “They’ve got him, or someone at any rate. He went home covered in blood in the early hours, neighbours spotted ‘im and called it in.”

They returned to the police station immediately, Carter fidgeting nervously, Beaumont insisting on smoking out of the window of the police car while driving, completely against regulations.

The suspect, a 45-year-old man by the name of Adam Davidson, was pale and gangly and reminded Carter curiously of a spider.

“Right then,” said Beaumont, “did you do it or what?”

“No.” said the man.

“Why did you go ‘ome covered in the victim’s blood then?”

“I’ve already told the other copper. I like to drive about late at night. I suffer from insomnia. It helps me relax.”

Beaumont nodded understandingly.

“I happened upon the murder scene,” Davidson continued, “and I went to see if I could help. Then I slipped on the blood pooled on the road and fell on the victim.”

“Rubbish.” said Carter.

At that moment there was a knock on the door.

“Hang on a sec.” Beaumont said to the man, and he beckoned Carter.

They went outside, where PC Whiting was waiting for them.

“Sorry to disturb.” he said. “Just want to let you know, the DNA matches, and the footprints match his shoes. The footprints match the ones found at Ferrer Street as well. Looks like we’ve got our our man.”

“Thanks Whiting.” said Beaumont, and he watched Whiting walk off down the corridor. Then he turned to Carter and said, “Take a statement and let him go. It’s not ‘im.”

“What do you mean, it’s not him?” said Carter, outraged. “Of course it’s him.”

“Nah.” said Beaumont. “I don’t think it’s him.”

“Why not, in the name of God?”

“He’s left-handed. You can tell from how he gestures, mate, and his eye movements. Killer was right-handed or ambidextrous.”

“You can’t let him go based on that! What about his footprints?”

“Coincidence. You can buy those shoes all over the place.”

“They were the same size!”

“Like I said. Anyway, forensics probably cocked it up.”

“We can’t let him go.” said Carter adamantly. “We should charge him.”

Beaumont shook his head.

“Are you going to send him on his way or I shall I do it?”

“We need to charge him.”

Beaumont inhaled deeply and drew himself up to his full height.

“Now you listen here.” he said, jabbing his finger at Carter’s chest. “That man’s innocent. You’re making me angry now. Don’t make me angry. You check him out or I’ll check him out. Go in there and take his statement, and tell him he’s free to leave. Bloody well do it.”

Carter glared at Beaumont, whose face was flushing red.

Finally he went into the interrogation room and began taking the man’s statement.

When he’d finished, he asked the man to wait. Davidson was happy to comply.

Carter went immediately to Chief Inspector Burrow’s office, where he found Burrows immersed in administrative tasks.

“Sorry to disturb, Inspector.” he said. “It’s just that, we’ve got a suspect for the Hill Way murder. His footprints match, DNA matches, footprints match the Ferrer Street murder, and he was spotted returning home at four in the morning covered in the victim’s blood. Thing is, sir, Beaumont says I’m to let him go.”

“Well, what are you waiting for, Carter? Tell him he can go home.”

“Sir?” said Carter, astonished. “But —”

“Beaumont must know what he’s doing.” said Inspector Burrows. “I have every faith in him. You’re good at your job, Carter, but with all due respect, Burrows is a better detective than you’ll ever be, or I’ll ever be. Let the suspect go.”

“Beaumont is unhinged. I saw him tear down a recruitment poster in the street a few weeks ago. He’s got major issues.”

Burrows harrumphed and pressed his lips together. He seemed to arrive suddenly at a decision.

“Look, he probably wouldn’t like me telling you this, but there are reasons why he’s like what he’s like. You see, Beaumont was in the war.”

“Which war?”

“With Russia. Conscripted. Messed him up pretty bad. But whatever his emotional problems, he’s an incredible detective. If he says to let the suspect go, you do it. OK?”

Carter nodded disbelievingly, lost for words, and eventually managed to say, “If you insist, sir. Under protest.”

“Under whatever you like, Carter.” said the Inspector.

As he was leaving the Inspector’s office, Carter turned and said, “Can I have the suspect put under observation, sir?”

“No.” said the Inspector curtly.

Carter watched Adam Davidson leave the police station with a nervous sinking feeling in his stomach. Davidson had surely murdered twice, and he would surely murder again.

The night of the 15th of September was unnaturally dark, due to a heavy storm. By the following morning, the roads were still wet with rain.

At nine in the morning the police station received an emergency call. Two officers rushed out of the rear exit of the police station, into the car park at the back. In doing so they passed Beaumont, who was standing behind the station, smoking. He asked them where they were going and one of them shouted a reply over his shoulder.

Beaumont quickly finished his cigarette and went into the station to find Carter.

“Let’s go.” he said. “There’s a development.”

“What kind of development?” Carter asked, but Beaumont was already halfway out of the door.

Ten minutes later they pulled up outside a large depressing square concrete building.

“Used to be a hospital, till they found it was riddled with asbestos. Now it’s awaiting demolition.” Beaumont explained. “There’s a courtyard in the middle of it.”

“That’s where the crime occurred?”

“Yeah. That’s the site of the occurrence.”

As they made their way into the building, one of the officers who’d responded to the emergency made his way out of the building, accompanying a slightly-built man in late middle age.

“Who’s he?” Beaumont asked the officer.

“Caretaker, Inspector.” said the officer. “He phoned it in.”

“I want to talk to him personally.” said Beaumont.

“How long are you going to be?” the officer asked.

“Half an hour, tops.” said Beaumont.

“I’ll be happy to wait.” said the man. “Anything I can do to help.”

The man forced a smile, but he was clearly in shock.

“Much appreciated.” said Beaumont.

Inside, the building was full of dust and spider webs. The walls had once been painted a pristine white but now the paint was full of cracks, smeared with unidentifiable substances and adorned with sporadic outbreaks of graffiti. Ancient flaking signs directed people to obsolete departments: X-Ray, Orthopaedics, Cardiology.

They made their way towards the courtyard at the centre of the building, completely surrounded by the grey crumbling walls with their dark, blank windows.

“Might as well light up.” said Beaumont. “No-one’s going to complain in here.”

He lit a cigarette, after offering the packet to Carter, who declined, since he had never smoked, and in fact detested the odour of cigarettes.

The lights in the building worked only sporadically; most of them were long since defunct, and if anything the endless corridors seemed to become darker as they walked further into the building.

Frustratingly, it seemed to be impossible to simply walk directly from the outer doors to the inner courtyard; instead they found themselves walking along one grimy corridor after another.

Carter experienced a curious mixture of emotions that both pulled him towards the courtyard and simultaneously pushed him away from it. He was beginning to fervently wish they would emerge once more into what little sunlight was available on that overcast morning, while at the same time feeling distinctly apprehensive about the sight that awaited them there.

Finally they saw the courtyard through the cracked filthy panes of a glass door. A couple of people from Forensics were milling about taking samples.

“Where is he?” said Carter, peering outside.

Beaumont raised his eyes upwards.

“We’ve got to walk out underneath the body?” said Carter.

“No, don’t worry, it’s off over there a little bit.”

Beaumont gestured with his cigarette.

They pushed the doors open and stepped into the courtyard, turning immediately to look at the body hanging from a window on the upper floor.

“Sick b*****d.” said Carter, gasping.

The legs of the cadaver had been severed at the knees and the arms at the elbows. The body had once belonged to a young man.

“Why is he doing this?” said Carter.

“Who?”

“The murderer. The serial killer.”

“It’s terrorism.” said Beaumont. “He wants to shock us.”

“How do you know?”

“Limbs cut off after the victim was already dead, otherwise they’d be more blood. Different thing every time. No consistency.”

“Maybe it’s a different bloke.”

“No.” said Beaumont. “Same bloke.”

Carter eyed the blood that had streaked down the wall and collected in a blackish pool on the broken concrete tiles below.

“That’s a lot of blood.” he said.

“Not enough, mate.” said Beaumont, shaking his head. “Purely done to shock. Not to inflict pain. Let’s go and have a look at the room he’s hanging from.”

In the end an hour passed before they arrived back at the police station, Carter shaking and nauseous. The caretaker had waited patiently for them. Beaumont was carrying a large hunting knife that had been carefully placed in an evidence bag and which was, apparently, the murder weapon, having been found in the room from which the body had been hung.

PC Leaming had almost finished taking the witness’s statement.

“We’ll take it from here, Leaming.” said Beaumont.

“Very good, Inspector.” said Leaming, and he left the room, shutting the door quietly and respectfully behind him.

“Right then, what can you tell us?” Beaumont asked the man.

“I’ve already told that other fellow everything.” he said. “I’m happy to repeat it if you like.”

“Just give us the basic outline.”

“I was mopping the floor when I heard a dreadful scream. I looked out my window and …”

He paused, clearly holding back strong emotions.

“… I saw that poor man hanging there. From my quarters I can clearly see the other side of the courtyard, where he was hanging. Oh, it was so dreadful. Then I thought I saw something moving in one of the upstairs windows. I took a fire axe in case I had to defend myself and I ran downstairs and over to the other side of the building.”

“Very brave.” Carter interjected.

“I just knew I had to do something.” said the man. “I ran round and about the other side of the building a bit, then I heard the doors at the front closing. I hurried over to the front and I was just in time to see someone running off. A powerfully-built man, dressed all in black. I couldn’t see his face. He had a balaclava pulled over his head, and I could only see him from the back.”

Beaumont picked up the evidence bag containing the murder weapon, sliding it across to himself over the table. He stood up and began turning it around in his hands.

“How tall was ‘e?” Beaumont asked the man, walking over to the other side of the room and gazing into space in the corner.

“About six foot I should think.” said the man. “I don’t know what that’d be in metres.”

“Six foot.” said Beaumont, taking the knife out of the bag and peering at it thoughtfully. “So if ‘e was six foot and ‘e ‘eld the knife like this, in his right hand …”

Beaumont trailed off, making short stabbing motions with the knife.

The witness twisted around to glance at him, then turned back to look at Carter.

“What time did you get to work?” he asked.

“About six.” said the witness. “I like to get started early. Then I can finish early.”

“Did you see the sunrise this morning, then?” said Beaumont.

The witness glanced at Beaumont again, puzzled.

“I might have see it briefly after I got up, through the window. Why do you ask?”

“Do you like sunrises?”

“They’re all right. What’s that got to do with the price of eggs, if you’ll excuse me asking, Inspector?”

“A little exercise.” said Beaumont, running his finger along the edge of the knife, which was still smeared with the victim’s blood.

Carter gazed at him, puzzled. This didn’t seem a proper way to handle evidence, but Carter wasn’t going to criticise Beaumont in front of a witness.

“It ‘elps with recalling details.” said Beaumont. “Will you ‘umour me a bit?”

“Certainly, if you think it’ll help.”

“How do sunrises make you feel?” Beaumont asked.

“Well.” said the man, almost laughing slightly. “I suppose I like to see the sun come up, hear the birds singing. Makes you feel ready to start the day.”

“I see.” said Beaumont. “You got any more questions, Carter?”

“No, I —” Carter began, but at that moment, Beaumont plunged the knife into the witness’s neck.

“What the —” shouted Carter, jumping up from his chair.

Beaumont pulled the knife handle forwards, the knife cutting deep into the man’s windpipe.

Carter staggered backwards, shocked beyond belief.

There was a loud bang and a shower of electric sparks emerged from the witness’s severed neck.

“Bloody clanker.” said Beaumont. “I knew it as soon as I saw him.”

He continued to sever the witness’s head. Its arms worked spasmodically, grasping at him, but he stood back, leaning over the machine, methodically sawing at the head.

“Engineered to look and sound ‘armless. Would ‘ave killed both of us if we’d tried to detain it. Chinese probably. Seen loads of these when I was fighting in the Russian war.”

“How did you know?” said Carter.

“You build up a sort of instinct. I like to give them a chance to get a bit poetical. They always trot out typical AI slop. No actual feelings, you see, Carter.”

He took the machine’s head by its hair and placed it on the desk facing Carter.

“I’m going out for a smoke.” he said. “Come and join me. Get some fresh air.”

Outside, Carter leaned back against the wall, exhaling shakily.

“I really thought you were murdering a witness.” he said.

“I may be a bit unhinged, mate, but I’m not that bad yet.” said Beaumont.

“I still don’t understand how you spotted it.”

“Instinct.” said Beaumont, exhaling a enormous blue-grey plume of smoke. “That girl in the back office who looks like your wife—”

“Carla?”

“Yeah, Carla. ‘Ow do you know she’s not your wife?”

“I … well, I … she looks different. Her teeth are different, for a start.”

“Do you recognise her by her teeth, then?”

“No.” said Carter, laughing. “I don’t know how can tell her apart from my wife, but I definitely can and do. Otherwise my wife would do to me what you did to that clanker.”

“Exactly.” said Beaumont. “You don’t know how you do it, but you do it. I’ve met enough of them to know the difference between them and us. Best start practising. There’s probably hundreds of them here already.”

“Why are they here? There’s not enough of them to kill us all.”

“Demoralisation.”

Carter nodded gravely.

“When did you first realise?”

“When I saw those footprints outside the window. What’s ‘e up to, standing in one spot for an hour, probably, sinking into the earth, when he can’t even see anything? Typical clanker behaviour.”

“Do you think it did the other two murders?”

“I’m certain it did.” said Beaumont. “Forensics’ll check its memory and we’ll have confirmation in a day or two.”

Beaumont gazed reflectively at the brick wall that surrounded the car park. He seemed almost calm, for once, Carter thought.

“God, I hate politicians.” said Beaumont. Then he crossed himself and said, “Forgive me, Lord.”

At a certain point he climbed a tree and sat sprawled over a branch, aimlessly staring at the ground.

The hunters didn’t catch his attention until they were almost underneath him. They were nearly naked and they carried spears. When he saw them, he flew into a blind rage. He dropped onto them, without caring too much which one he actually landed on, and began to tear at the man’s face.

Four hunters went looking for food; only one returned to the village. He returned with a wild story about a deranged chimp that had killed his three companions. He was carrying its corpse on his back. His face was splashed with its blood.

When rumours of an outbreak reached Europe, Dr. Erika Sönderlund was sent to investigate it, from the University of Uppsala.

She arrived to find half the entire village in a curiously morose and reflective mood, which she assumed to be due to the deaths they had endured, the number of which increased every day.

Sönderlund followed every protocol with the utmost scrupulousness. In the investigation that followed later, she was completely exonerated. The protocols, designed by some of the finest minds in Europe and the USA, were simply inadequate to deal with the new disease.

The best thing, it was often said afterwards, would have been to carpet bomb the entire area and make sure nothing survived. When faced with what was to emerge, people dropped ordinary ethical considerations like hot potatoes.

All of that was in the near future when my friend James announced that he was going to take part in a new drug trial.

“They’re saying it blows Prozac out of the water.” he told me.

“They always say that every time they bring out a new drug.” I said. “It’s just marketing. Ten or twenty years later they discover all the problems with it and they do the same thing again with yet another drug.”

But I felt immediately bad after saying all that stuff, because I could see he was finally almost excited about something, after three years of suffering absolutely crippling depression. I’ve just never seen antidepressants really help anyone.

He shook his head.

“This is really something new.” he said.

Then he began to cry.

“It’s either this or I’m just going to end it all, Dave.” he said.

It was hard to see him like that. He’d been in that state since his long-term girlfriend, Kirsty, had dumped him, even though he’d since met someone else, a girl named Julia, and they’d got engaged. James had always had a knack with the ladies. They were strongly drawn to him for reasons I could never quite understand.

Julia was not unfamiliar with depression herself, so she understood him better than Kirsty ever had, and yet his depression hadn’t lifted after he’d got together with her. It was as though, once some precipitating event had brought on his condition, it just refused to lift.

James’s depressive behaviour had been one of the factors Kirsty had cited at the time in no longer wanting to be with him. Truth be told, I’d never really liked Kirsty. I felt her behaviour all along had really laid the groundwork for James’s misery. Julia was a big improvement.

But then, if he’d been truly happy to start with, would he even have tolerated Kirsty?

Whenever I thought about it, I just ended up going round in circles. I don’t buy the idea that depression is usually just a biochemical thing; why would such a vast number of people all have become biochemically disordered at the same time? All the same, I couldn’t explain precisely why James had started on a downward spiral when other people in much the same situation just don’t.

The drug only had the code name AX52 and its development had reached Phase 3. It was being given to several hundred people with minimal supervision. In theory, it had already been shown to be relatively safe. I just didn’t like what I read about it. Where James saw hope and promise, I saw evidence of a wholesale reordering of brain chemistry that I found disturbing.

I met up with him the day after he’d taken the first dose. He wanted to go and get a beer.

I saw immediately that he was profoundly changed. This drug clearly wasn’t the type of thing where you have to wait two months and then you might be able to convince yourself that it’s working. He had transformed into absolutely the most cheerful person imaginable. He exuded resilience and a quiet confidence.

“So I take it it works then?” I said.

“Dave,” he said, “I feel amazing. I feel normal. I see everything differently. I’m cured.”

We were in a bar and he was absolutely as relaxed as if he was at home in his own living room and all the people in the bar were close personal friends. He met everyone’s gaze calmly and openly, with a faint smile that spoke of a deep content.

“Is it like speed or something?” I asked. “Are you going to crash at some point? Will it stop you sleeping?”

He laughed amiably.

“No, none of that. It has no known side-effects at all, and you don’t develop tolerance.”

“You never develop tolerance?”

“It’s not a stimulant. It reconfigures the brain naturally. My brain will probably go back to how it was unless I take one pill a day, but it doesn’t have to be in my bloodstream to work.”

“Not sure I understand.” I said.

“Think of a car. You have to get it serviced regularly or it’ll probably stop working, but you don’t need to take a mechanic around with you.”

“I see.” I said.

What he was telling me, was hard to believe. If true, they had discovered the perfect drug. I almost couldn’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to take it. After all, who doesn’t feel stressed or low or anxious at times?

I know lots of people who are stressed or low or anxious most of the time.

We spent three hours in the bar, getting through only a couple of beers each, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was as if the drug had eliminated everything bad in James’ personality, leaving only a brilliant sense of humour and a superbly optimistic outlook. It hadn’t made him smarter or funnier or anything that he wasn’t before; it had only removed all obstacles to him being his best possible self.

When I went home, my mind was whirling with possibilities. If this drug was for real, soon everyone would be taking it, and we’d be living in an entirely different kind of world to the one we’ve been used to.

It was only when I tried to sleep that night that darker possibilities began to plague me.

What would happen, I wondered, if James got himself involved in something that positively required darker emotions? What would happen if, for example, his fiancé Julia, who he lived with, developed some sort of serious disease? Was he still in possession of the ability to express the full range of human emotions, or had half of his emotional range been cut off?

I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

The signs were there, all around us, in retrospect. People were becoming oddly quiet and contemplative. Not everyone, but lots of people; nearly a third of the population, they said later. Julia was one of those people. Instead of being happy for James or, alternatively, worrying about the implications of this strange new drug, she began to spend hour after hour staring at the wall, or the floor, or sometimes out of the window.

This went on for two weeks with no sign of change.

James wasn’t worried. He said she was just like that sometimes. She may have been like that sometimes, but she stopped going into work and spent all of her time staring blankly at things.

“She says she just feels like she needs a break.” he told me, with hardly a trace of concern.

“What kind of break is this, where she just stares at things? Spa trips or two weeks in Paris I could understand, but this isn’t normal.”

He shrugged.

“Everyone’s different.” he said. “She needs some quiet contemplation time. Some ‘me’ time.”

“Me time.” I echoed, struggling to comprehend his attitude.

Julia worked full-time at an optician’s and spending two weeks of her precious vacation time doing literally nothing didn’t make any sense to me, but there was no getting through to James.

This conversation took place in their living room, with Julia actually present. She would respond apathetically if directly asked a question, but otherwise she said nothing.

In the mornings I was in the habit of turning on the TV so I could get the news while I ate breakfast. One morning, by which time Julia had been enjoying her staring holiday for yet another week, I turned the TV on to find there was only one topic in the news: a strange new plague that caused people to abruptly flip into a long-lasting state of extreme aggression. At that point no-one had connected this sudden flip to the epidemic of blank contemplation. It would be months before anyone was even able to understand that there was such an epidemic, much less connect it to the horrors that followed.

In some respects the disease, as we now believe it to be, followed a similar pattern to the sleeping sickness that some connect to the Spanish flu, except in reverse. The flu epidemic was obvious, then later on some fell prey to a strange disorder in which they became unable to concentrate, or even, in the more extreme cases, to stay awake. Whether the two really were connected or not remains a matter of conjecture.

In the case of IAD, Infectious Aggression Disorder (the acronym being later pronounced as if it was a word, “eeyad”), the prodromal phase typically lasted several weeks; the victim would fall into a contemplative state, often becoming fixated on unimportant things in their immediate surroundings, such as the texture of carpets or the movement of people outside a window on the street.

The infectious agent was unknown, and remains unknown, but once infected, the victim eventually snaps into a sustained violent rage unpredictably, at least in most cases. Only in a small percentage of cases does recovery follow; typically, death occurs through violence, and if not, eventually the heart gives out.

Another parallel some have drawn is between the prodromal phase of schizophrenia, in which apathy and an inability to self-motivate may become evident, eventually giving way to auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and disordered thinking.

Truth be told, there are no exact parallels in medical history or science.

Rabies may spend even a decade travelling patiently up the nerves before finally infecting the brain, but during this period, symptoms are typically absent.

I stood and stared at the TV. The whole situation sounded serious, but you can never really tell with TV. Then I heard a shout from outside. I looked out of the window to see two people, a man and a woman, attacking an elderly man in the most hideously brutal fashion imaginable. In fact, I don’t think you can imagine it. I had never seen anything like it, except in horror films.

Of course I had to do something. I had to help him. I took my cricket bat from the wardrobe and checked the window again to see if he was still alive, thinking I could rush out and perhaps still save him. I didn’t want to be one of those people who watch someone getting attacked and do nothing to help. I quickly regretted looking at all.

There was nothing left of the elderly man other than a horrible mess. Meanwhile, the people who’d attacked him were fighting another three people, all of them gouging and kicking at each other in a manner that didn’t even seem quite human.

The television too was showing horrific scenes, blurred out, but shocking.

I tried to phone my parents to check if they were OK, and found the signal was down.

The next idea I had was to go and find James. I needed to talk to someone about the situation. Maybe he knew more than me about it. Someone must surely understand what’s going on, I thought. James lived only about a hundred yards up the street, on the other side.

I hastily put on a coat and went down the stairs to the front door of my apartment building. From inside the door it wasn’t really possible to see much, but there didn’t seem to be anyone near the door, so I slowly unlocked it and opened it.

Aside from the people a little further down the street, who were still fighting with each other and sporadically attacking the corpse of the old man, there was another gaggle of nutcases further up the street, in the other direction, also fighting with each other. Several residential apartments and shops had broken windows.

I thought if I quickly crossed the road and then walked briskly up towards the people who were fighting, the second lot, I could get to James’s place without attracting their attention. They seemed pretty absorbed in the fight and they were a little further up than where James lived.

I ran across the road swiftly and pressed my back against a wall on the other side. No-one had noticed me. Then I began to edge slowly up the street, staying close to the shop windows, ducking into doorways whenever possible, to reassess the situation.

The nutcases remained absorbed in their fight, which was worsening in intensity. At a certain point I stopped in the doorway of a shop that sold general household stuff, like soap and shampoo and cleaning products. I peeked around the corner of the doorway at the small crowd. I was sickened to observe that one of them, a woman, seemed to have had her eye gouged out, but she was continuing to fight with incredible ferocity. Any one of them could have just turned and ran, but none of them were running. Instead they were clawing and punching and kicking, emitting inhuman screams and growls.

I fell back into the doorway, nauseated, breathing heavily. I still had perhaps another twenty yards to go; I was almost there.

When the glass smashed behind me, I almost jumped out of my skin. An arm thrust itself through the shattered door and fastened itself around my neck. I jabbed backwards with the cricket bat. Whoever it was, was trying to pull my neck onto the sharp edge of the broken glass. On my third attempt I managed to get them with the bat, and they roared in pain. From the roar I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman; the noise sounded animalistic.

I pulled myself free and turned around to look.

My assailant was hardly more than a teenager, male, of slight build, with long blond hair and about a week of beard. He was covered in dripping blood. The expression on his face was one of incandescent rage.

Apparently he couldn’t get through the door; most of the entire door was glass but only the upper part of it was smashed. He began kicking furiously at the lower half.

I ran into the street, and then the fighters noticed me. One of them broke off and ran towards me; a man wearing a bloodstained white shirt and black trousers, as though on his way to a job at the bank.

I ran back towards my apartment, but the rage-fuelled maniac was too fast and he was almost upon me when I turned and let him have it with the bat. Mercifully, he crumpled immediately and lay in the road shouting threats at me.

Whatever was wrong with those people, it appeared they at least didn’t have superhuman strength. They were ordinary people in the grip of a blind rage.

None of the others had peeled off the group, so I ran directly to James’s door and hit the bell.

His apartment had an intercom system with a camera, so I knew he’d be able to see me, assuming he was actually at home.

I waited, watching the fighters nervously.

Then the teenager appeared. He had somehow got through the glass door and was lumbering towards me with a look on his blood-streaked face of pure hatred and anger. Fortunately his leg seemed to have got injured somehow, and he was limping. When he saw me looking at him he howled, and that caught the attention of the fighters.

They began walking slowly towards me.

“Look at how clean he is!” one of them shouted, as though not being covered in blood was an offence to all natural decency.

The woman with the missing eye shouted, “I’m going to eat your face!”

There were a couple of swear words in there that I’ve left out.

I readied the bat. Had it not been for the bat I’m sure they would have run at me.

“I’m not your enemy!” I shouted at them, my voice quavering with fear.

This was met only with a crude insult from a large man in a tattered leather jacket.

I pressed the bell again frantically.

They all began mocking me, echoing my words: “I’m not your enemy” and laughing.

I was about to make a run for it while I still might hope to break through the semicircle they were forming around me, when the door opened and I bolted inside, slamming it shut afterwards. They began throwing themselves against it. Fortunately it was made of sturdy wood, reinforced with steel.

Never before have I felt grateful for the criminal element of our town forcing such security measures upon us.

I ran immediately up the stairs to James’s apartment on the third floor. Avoiding the lift seemed prudent.

James opened the door with a smile on his face.

“Hey, I’ve been wondering if you’re all right!” he said.

At that moment I felt a huge sense of relief. He seemed calm, composed, and even relaxed.

I ran in, shut the door, locked it and put the security chain on.

“I nearly died out there.” I said.

“Yeah, I saw.” he said. “You’re shaking. Would you like a coffee or a beer or something?”

“Beer.” I said, but then it occurred to me that alcohol would slow my reflexes and make me easy prey. “No, coffee would be great, actually. God, it’s so good to see you. Have you been watching the news?”

“Yeah, it’s terrible.” he said, and he went into the little kitchen to make coffee.

We chatted for a few minutes about the morning’s events. I told him about the elderly man, and the demented teenager, and the crowd of fighters who’d nearly got me.

He said he’d seen a lot of horrific things from the window.

“Milk and sugar?” he asked. “Just milk, right?”

“Yeah, just milk.” I said.

He brought in two steaming mugs and we sat at the table where he and Julia ate their meals.

I looked around the apartment. It was familiar, comforting. Julia had really brightened the place up, hanging a couple of pictures depicting Italian landscapes, placing a smattering of scented candles around the flat, and putting some brightly-coloured cushions on the sofa. The TV was on quietly in the background, showing endless scenes of horror and devastation.

I was in such a state that I had completely forgotten to ask about Julia. She owned her own place that her parents had helped her buy, so she wasn’t there one-hundred percent of the time, although they did more or less live together.

“How’s Julia?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s OK, I think.” he said. “In a bit of a bad mood, to tell you the truth. You know what she’s like.”

“Is she feeling down again?”

He pondered the question.

“No, not down, exactly. I think she’s angry with me because I keep forgetting to take my shoes off when I come in from outside. She hates it when I walk around the flat in outdoor shoes.”

At that moment there was a tremendous bang and a howl. I practically jumped out of my skin.

“That’ll be her.” said James. “I had to lock her in the bedroom. She’ll calm down in a bit.”

“That’s Julia?”

“‘Fraid so. Maybe it’s the time of the month. I’ve lost track.”

I got up and walked towards the bedroom.

Julia’s voice, so distorted with rage that it was barely recognisable, emitted a string of curses from the other side of the bedroom door.

“H-hello.” I said. “Julia, is that you? It’s me, Dave.”

“Dave, you piece of filth!” she screamed unhingedly. “I’ll tear your throat out! Open this door! You’re finished, you worthless turd!”

I’ve toned down her language considerably. No point writing out the torrent of abuse that emerged from her crazed lips.

“You see what I mean?” said James amiably, coming up behind me.

“James, she’s infected!”

“Infected? Do you think so?”

“Obviously she’s infected.” I said.

“Oh, well.” he said. “Better get a doctor, I suppose.”

“The doctor’s can’t do anything! Haven’t you been following the news? You’ve seen what’s going on outside! How would we even get to a doctor?”

“You’re quite right. What do you think we should do then?”

“I don’t know! How should I know?!”

I walked back into the living room. The gears of my mind were whirling frantically. Julia clearly wasn’t in her right mind, but neither was James.

“It’s the drug you’re taking.” I said to him. “You can’t grasp the severity of the situation. You’ve lost your human compassion. Can’t you see?”

He looked slightly hurt, but I wasn’t sure if his facial expression was even really sincere, or just put on for effect.

“Do you think I should let her out?” he said. “She’ll definitely attack us, I can promise you that. We only just cleaned the flat yesterday.”

“Don’t let her out! I’m just suggesting, you should probably be more upset.”

“What good would that do?”

He had a point, I supposed.

“She’s going to need food and water.” I said.

“No, there’s a massive bag of snacks in the bedroom, and a couple of bottles of cola.”

I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

“My God.” I said.

“She’ll be OK, honestly. You don’t need to worry.”

I grabbed him by the shoulders.

“We’re in the middle of some kind of epidemic. Everyone’s going crazy. We’ll be lucky if any of us survives. We have no idea if she’s ever going to recover. They might easily break in at any moment and beat us to death and eat our faces!”

He pushed my hands off himself.

“Hey, hey, there’s no need to panic.” he said. “What’s the point?”

I strode about, literally wringing my hands, trying to think what to do.

I felt as though I had stepped into a nightmare. We were surrounded by deranged maniacs and the only sane person I could talk to about it was completely unable to grasp what was going on.

Oh, he knew the situation in purely logical terms. He knew about the epidemic and now that I’d explained it to him, he could see that Julia must be infected. The problem was, none of this carried any real emotional weight for him.

What would happen if we were attacked? His fight-or-flight response wouldn’t kick in. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be paralysed by fear either. I had to hope his abnormal mental state could form some sort of advantage.

Then something caught my attention on the TV. The national news channel had been replaced by some improvised local thing, telling us to bring infected people to the train station where possible.

“It’s important to avoid all contact with infected people.” the announcer said. “However, if you have an infected person securely restrained at home, and if you have a car, bring the infected person to the treatment centre in the train station. I repeat again, a cure has been found. A simple injection can restore your loved ones to sanity.”

“We have to take her to the train station.” I said.

“I can ask her if you want, but I don’t think she’ll agree to it.” he said doubtfully.

“James, she’s insane. I’m not suggesting we ask her. I’m suggesting we tie her up and drag her there. Have you got a car?”

“You know I haven’t.” he said.

I swore under my breath.

“We can walk. If we can restrain her, we can manage it.”

“You know, you’re sounding a bit heavy-handed here.” he said. “That’s my fiancé you’re talking about. I can’t just force her to go places she doesn’t want to go. Haven’t you heard of feminism? Women have rights, you know.”

“She’s not in her right mind! She could die without treatment!”

“I suppose.” he said. “Well, all right then, let’s do it.”

“OK!” I said, relieved that he’d grasped it.

“OK, how are we going to manage it?”

That was the million-dollar question.

There was another inhuman howl from behind the bedroom door, and the sound of Julia throwing herself against the door with incredible force.

“What’s that, my love?” said James.

In response she only howled again, and shouted something incomprehensible in a voice that sounded positively demonic.

“How about, you stand a little way from the door. I open the door. She rushes at you and I slip a pillowcase over her head from behind, then we both fall on her and tie her up with some rope?”

“Sure, but I haven’t got a pillowcase or rope. The pillowcases are in the bedroom.”

“This is going to require some thought.” I said.

After a while we figured out that one of the cushions on the sofa had a case big enough to do the job. A second cushion cover we cut up into strips to tie her up with.

Then I stood behind the door and prepared to open it.

“Do it.” said James.

When I opened the door, Julia bolted out like a rocket. Unfortunately she had found a spanner that James kept in a toolbox under the bed, and she raised it in the air, intending to brain him with it. It was lucky he didn’t have a hammer in there.

I managed to get the cushion cover over her head just in time. James snatched the spanner and we tied her up.

She swore at us atrociously. The people infected with IAD weren’t zombies; they were fully conscious and aware, just unable to control their blind aggressive impulses. Perhaps rabies does the same thing in extreme cases.

“Should we take the cover off her head?” James asked, a slight smile on his face.

“No, I think leave it on.” I said. “She can breathe perfectly well. How does it look out the window?”

James went to look.

“Bad.” he said.

“You’ll need a weapon. I’ve got the cricket bat.”

“We’ve got some good kitchen knives.” he said.

This posed a moral quandary. As I’ve mentioned, we weren’t dealing with zombies here. We were dealing with people who’d lost their minds temporarily and may even be curable, if the reports were to be believed.

“We need something non-lethal.”

“How’s a cricket bat non-lethal?”

“I can just break their arms or something.”

“I could just stab them a little bit.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! If you stab anyone at all, they could bleed to death.”

“Yeah.” said James.

He thought for a bit, then said, “How about a can of Super-Eeze?”

“What’s that?”

“Spray for sore muscles. It makes your skin feel hot, so I reckon it’d sting the eyes.”

“Perfect.” I said.

Soon we were making our way down the street, dragging along an incandescent Julia, who screamed every threat under the sun at us.

James seemed amazingly sanguine.

“Doesn’t this upset you?” I asked him.

“She’s always like this when she’s hungry.” he said.

“She’s not always like this!” I said. “She’s never like this! What’s wrong with you?”

“You don’t see her as much as I do. She can get really irritable at times, especially before lunch.”

There was no point reasoning with him. The drug really had removed half his emotional capacity.

Periodically one of the deranged victims of the disease ran at us, and I either got them in the legs with the cricket bat or James sprayed them in the face. Often it took both of us to deter them, and we had to temporarily let go of Julia. We had taken the precaution of tying her ankles together with a short length of fabric, so she couldn’t get far.

For me, every attack was a fresh horror, but I could see James was quite enjoying himself. The whole thing was like some sort of weird computer game to him.

Eventually, after what seemed to me like half the day, we turned onto the street that ended in the train station. A ton of people in hazmat suits, mostly carrying rifles, were milling around the front of the station, but they didn’t scare me nearly as much as what I saw once we got a full view of the station.

A chimney had been hastily erected over the station and it was pouring forth black smoke. What could they possibly be burning in the station?

As I watched, four IADs ran at the figures outside the station. They were promptly dispatched with the rifles, and carried into the station.

They could have tasered them, or thrown nets over them or something, but instead the suited figures simply shot them.

“This doesn’t look good.” I said to James.

“I know what you mean.” he replied. “All stations look the same. Not exactly brutalist, but definitely not built with pride. Bit depressing, I used to think.”

“Not the architecture! I mean, the chimney and the shooting. James, I don’t think they’re helping people in there. I think they’re murdering them and incinerating them.”

“Oh, yes. Could be.”

He was still smiling.

“We have to get Julia back to the flat, James. They’ll kill her.”

“I wouldn’t like that at all.” he said, and at least he was frowning slightly.

“Let’s go.”

But at that moment one of the figures noticed us and began shouting.

We ran, or as much as we could run with Julia tied up and completely out of her mind with anger.

Several of them caught up with us near the end of the street. One of them took aim with a rifle. I really thought it was all over and we were done for.

By pure luck, a bald middle-aged infected man suddenly ran at the man with the rifle out of nowhere—or, more precisely, from behind a tree. Suddenly there was chaos.

Another of them tried to shoot us but James snatched my cricket bat, ran up to him—miraculously dodging bullets all the way—and knocked the gun out of his hand with a huge smirk.

I don’t know how Julia got free, but somehow she managed it. I backed away in horror, but fortunately she wasn’t interested in me. She ran at the suited men.

In the resulting melee, several shots were fired, yet none of them hit their targets. The men in the hazmat suits must have been shaking with fear. I certainly was.

For several minutes the street was full of screaming people, Julia scratching at the suited figures, climbing on their backs and clawing at their eyes, the infected man punching and kicking at them, and James judiciously hitting their legs and arms with the cricket bat.

I’m quite sure we committed many imprisonable offences. In Britain it’s illegal to arm yourself at all. Or had that law been suspended in view of the outbreak?

Eventually we were left with a pile of groaning bodies. The infected man ran off shouting in pure rage and Julia sat down, finally exhausted.

James had enjoyed himself tremendously.

“This is great!” he said.

“Great? We almost got killed!”

“Oh.” he replied. “Yeah, I suppose. That would be quite bad. My mother would never forgive me.”

“Let’s put the suits on before more of them turn up!”

We quickly divested three of the police or military people or whatever they were of their suits. Only one of them put up any resistance, and I soon shut him up with a quick blast of Super-Eeze to the eyes.

Getting Julia into a suit wasn’t easy. She complained like crazy and kept trying to hit us, but we managed it. She was completely out of energy, and that seemed to have dampened her fury for a while.

We made our way swiftly back to James’ flat, James dealing deftly and happily with anyone who attacked us.

Julia kept trying to argue with James, saying the most hurtful things she could possibly come up with, but nothing seemed to bother him at all. She directed a few remarks at me too, but I can’t say any of her criticisms hit home. They were so wild and deranged that they didn’t even hurt my feelings.

Eventually, and not without considerable difficulty, we managed to get Julia back in the bedroom again, the bedroom door firmly locked.

“What now?” said James.

“There’s nothing we can do.” I told him. “We just have to hope she gets better.”

“I don’t mind her moods.” he said. “I’m used to it.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“You’re really not.” I said. “That’s the drugs talking.”

“Anyway, you might as well stay over.” he said. “It’s fun out there, but a bit dangerous.”

We were there for five days, eking out the food in James’ cupboards. Then James ran out of medication. On the morning of the sixth day, he was inconsolable. He cried and raged and threatened to top himself. I did my best to keep him calm, telling him Julia would get better soon. It was really as though I was dealing with a completely different person.

There was no sign at that point of anyone getting better.

Nonetheless, three days after that, a miracle occurred. We awoke one morning to find Julia shouting from the other side of the door in a voice that sounded afraid, but otherwise calm.

When we opened the door she stumbled out, and James wrapped her in a tight embrace.

“I thought you were gone forever.” he cried.

Julia said nothing; she was sobbing hysterically.

I went to the window and looked out. In the street I saw only a couple of people picking their way slowly between pieces of wreckage and a smattering of corpses.

The epidemic was over just as quickly as it had begun. The week of rage, as it came to be known, had only really lasted nine or ten days.

I honestly thought we’d end up being prosecuted for our behaviour, but any crimes that had been committed during the week of rage were more or less written off as impossible to prosecute. It was unclear who had even been sane at the time.

Work continues to attempt to isolate the infective agent. Some say it’s a virus; other claim it’s a protein that somehow deranges the system; still others argue that mass poisoning was responsible. So far it hasn’t even been possible to prove that transmission from person to person occurred.

The infection, if that’s what it was, may even have somehow entered the water supply.

Almost certainly the week of rage was due to an infection, and almost certainly it originated in primate communities in the Congo.

Most of Britain was affected, and large parts of France and Germany.

Since then, things have been different. Everyone knows who their truest friends really are, and most of the things people used to worry about, now seem trivial and unimportant.

James seems quite happy. His depression lifted naturally, without recourse to the new drug, or any other.

Many people, it goes without saying, have lost people they loved. And yet, in spite of that, life now seems more valuable than it ever did before.

I don’t expect the situation will last. People always revert to type. Don’t they?

And sometimes I wonder what will happen if the new drug, AX52, gets approved.

On the 20th of February, Peter Donaldson, the acting chief at the time, called me into his office.

He pushed a photograph towards me.

“What do you know about Dr. Raymond Delittle?” he asked.

“I’ve never heard of him.” I said, truthfully.

I was a bit on edge talking to Donaldson and I wasn’t sure whether I ought to be calling him “sir”. But to my ears that would have sounded a little ridiculous, as if I’d been watching too many spy films.

Fortunately Donaldson was actually quite easy-going, in spite of his position. His hair was immaculately-groomed and he tended to peer at people over the top of a pair of half-moon glasses that he constantly took on and off. He more resembled a doctor in some well-to-do countryside village than the second most powerful person in Britain’s intelligence community.

“He’s a physicist.” he said. “He’s been working on a highly classified device. Top secret. Yesterday, he went missing, and he took the only prototype with him.”

“Kidnapped?”

“We thought so at first. But all the evidence points to him deliberately absconding with the device. We now believe he flew a small plane to an airfield in France, and then crossed into Italy. After that, so far, we have no further information on his whereabouts.”

Donaldson placed a series of further photographs on his desk facing me.

Delittle was sixty years of age and looked, if anything, older. He was wiry, and possessed a shock of unruly grey hair. His eyes were the most striking thing about him. They were a deep blue in colour and, even in the photographs, seemed to bore into the camera. I can’t precisely define the look I saw in his eyes. Perhaps there was pain in it, and a sort of earnest imploring expression, but there was also something cold and evil.

I’ve often been accused of lacking in imagination, but even I could see all of that, even with the briefest of glances. With those eyes, Delittle was never going to be able to maintain any kind of disguise successfully; not even coloured contacts could hide the look in them. The only thing he’d be able to do, if he wanted to remain incognito, would be to wear sunglasses.

“You’re to go to Italy immediately and attempt to locate him.” Donaldson told me. “You’ll be given all possible support, no expense spared, but the operation must be completed covertly, with the utmost secrecy. When you find him, retrieve the device.”

“And what do I do with Delittle?”

“Kill him.”

“Kill him?” I said, a little incredulously.

“Doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it.”

“Can you tell me why he has to die?”

Donaldson took his spectacles off and stared at me coldly. The village doctor charade seemed to melt away.

“This device is unbelievably dangerous and we believe Delittle is planning to hand it over to foreign agents. He must not be allowed to do that and we cannot run the risk of a knowledge transfer taking place either. The existence of the device has never been officially acknowledged, which is why we need you to get it back with as little fuss as possible.”

“What does the device do?”

“That’s above your pay grade. All you need to know is, this prototype is unfathomably dangerous.”

I sat there thinking for a moment. Then I said, “Why me? I’ve never done this type of thing before.”

“You speak Italian fluently. Also, Delittle is a keen outdoorsman, like you. He may try to make use of those skills in evading capture.”

“That sounds a little far-fetched.”

“Not according to our psychologists. Now, level with me, Andrew. Can you do this for us? Have we made a mistake?”

“No mistake.” I said, shaking my head. “I can do it.”

“Good. Go and tell Angela what you need. She’ll see to it you have everything within the hour. A car will then take you to an airport, and you’ll be in Italy in under four hours.”

“Right.” I said, rising to my feet.

“Andrew,” he said abruptly, “if you can’t bring the device back, destroy it. The most important thing is that neither the device nor the knowledge of how it’s made fall into the hands of our potential enemies.”

I went away from Donaldson’s office with a curious mixture of emotions. The mission sounded very exciting, like something out of a spy novel, but I also knew there was a lot I wasn’t being told. Regarding the matter of killing Delittle, it sounded like he was a dangerous traitor, and the thought didn’t bother me much. In any case, if I didn’t do it, someone else would.

Whether I could actually find him, that was another matter altogether. It didn’t sound like there was much to go on. What was I suppose to do, exactly? I couldn’t just go to Italy and start asking people if they’d seen Delittle. Even if I could do that, I’d never find him in time, if he really was planning to sell the device to some foreign power.

The agency had employees who were skilled in locating missing people. People who knew how to access camera networks, people who maintained close relationships with police forces, people who were experts in psychology and could make an excellent guess at where a man like Delittle might go. I wasn’t one of those people.

I had to just trust that, among the many things that Donaldson clearly hadn’t shared with me were sound reasons for my involvement actually making sense.

On the plane I remember sitting there feeling like a proper spy. I was the real deal now. But I still had severe doubts about my ability to find Delittle, and in another way, I felt totally bogus. Imposter syndrome, you could call it.

A friend of mine used to say that the reason so many people suffer from imposter syndrome now is that they’re all imposters.

Surely there were people far better-trained than me, who might know how to locate an errant scientist with very little to go on. I wondered if perhaps I was just one of dozens of people, all with the same mission. Perhaps I was some kind of backup plan, in case the real professionals didn’t manage to find him.

At the airport, a small private effort in the Aosta valley, a man approached me wearing a dark blue suit and sunglasses. To me he looked like a stereotypical Italian. Behind him were two men who I assumed were some sort of military police, in beige uniforms and carrying Beretta AR70s.

“Marchetti.” said the man, holding out his hand.

I guessed that was his name and I told him mine. Or at least, I told him the name I’d been assigned for the mission.

He ushered me into a side room. I did half wonder if I was being arrested, but it turned out he had information for me.

“The … individual in which you are interested,” he said, in English, somewhat laboriously, “he has been seen here.”

He unfurled a map and pointed at a village.

The name of the village was unfamiliar to me.

“We can take you there.” he said.

“That would be very kind.” I said.

Marchetti drove me there himself in a German car, without the armed guards.

He was surprisingly chatty but I couldn’t tell him much. He claimed to work for AISI, the Italian internal intelligence service, and he had all the right documents, but one can never be too careful. In any case, I wasn’t sure how much we had shared with them.

He dropped me off at a hotel, which he said made excellent polenta with sausage.

The village was small enough to walk across in five minutes. Apart from the hotel there was a small grocery shop, a bar, a church, and not much else.

The hotel, I assumed, must have catered to hikers. The village was almost surrounded by mountains and the hotel had a sign on it that said we were at well over a thousand metres altitude.

Some details, obviously, I’ve had to leave out, for security reasons. Not that it really matters which village I was in, but a lot of this is still classified.

After checking in at the hotel and making enquiries about the other guests, I began to scour the village.

There was one prominent trail leading directly out of the village up the side of a mountain, so I asked some old men at the bar if they’d seen anyone go up there today.

Surprisingly, to me, they had. Apparently winter hiking is a thing in Italy. This was news to me. My mother is Italian but I had never been in Italy, aside from visiting Rome once.

I told them I was looking for my father, whom I claimed suffers mild dementia, and I was worried he’d got confused.

They were extremely helpful.

They told me at least five people had walked up the trail, and one man in particular sounded rather interesting. He had stopped in at the bar wearing a large backpack, and had ordered coffee. He hadn’t said much, but he’d said enough for them to notice he had a strong English accent.

His description matched Delittle quite well.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the folks back at the Agency had foreseen Delittle’s apparent flight into the hills, and if they had, why hadn’t they suggested the possibility to me at the outset?

Regardless, I set off to try to find this alleged Englishman, since that was my best and only lead.

The trail from the village led up an abandoned ski slope, consequently very steep, but in those days I was extremely fit and I basically ran up it, or as much as I could considering it was covered in snow.

I’d made about six hundred metres of additional altitude when I stopped for a rest and a spot of reconnaissance. Scanning the mountain with infra-red binoculars, I spotted a figure walking back and forth on a plateau some way off, near an ice-bound cave. Whoever it was, he must have diverged considerably from any trail to get there.

I abandoned my rest stop and made straight for the figure.

As I got closer all my doubts evaporated. The figure was Delittle, lightly-disguised, if one can call it a disguise, with a short beard and swept-back hair.

I paged a message back to HQ.

TARGET LOCATED.

The reply came swiftly.

ELIMINATE.

I took out my pistol and made my way steadily towards the figure.

There was nowhere for him to run. I could even chance a shot from some distance away. I was confident in my ability to chase him down if needed.

The main possibility that worried me was that someone was surely planning to meet him on that hillside. Why anyone would choose such a place for a rendezvous was quite unfathomable. Most likely he was expecting a helicopter.

When I was almost close enough to get off a shot, he disappeared into the cave. That was fine by me; in a way it made my task easier. Unless, of course, the cave led somewhere and he knew it, perhaps to an exit elsewhere on the mountain. That thought caused me to break into a run.

When I reached the cave I stopped and listened for a moment, but I could hear nothing. I scanned the dark blueish recesses with my binoculars, and they picked up no heat trace.

Almost immediately, when I began to walk forwards, I felt a sharp sting in my side. Then the world seemed to turn sideways.

I awoke to find myself propped against the rocks just outside the cave, my hands handcuffed behind my back and the handcuffs secured to a loop of metal wire that had somehow been fixed to the underlying rock. My ankles were similarly locked together and attached to a bolt driven into the ground.

Peering at me with those unsettling eyes was Delittle himself.

“You’re probably wondering what happened to you.” he said. Without waiting for me to say anything, he continued. “You were shot with a chemical pellet fired from this.”

He held up a long plastic tube.

“My own design. In airport scanners it looks like part of the frame of a suitcase.”

“What do you want with me?” I said, my words a little slurred due to the lingering effects of the drug.

Delittle smiled.

“I want you to understand.” he said. “Also, since you were evidently planning to kill me, I want you to suffer. It will be a comfort to me, to have someone else next to me when I activate the device.”

“What are you talking about?”

He peered into my face, and I had the feeling that his eyes bored right into my soul.

Then he took a suitcase out of his backpack. Donaldson had described exactly this suitcase to me; it was made of ridged titanium and could only be unlocked via a fingerprint sensor.

Delittle held his finger to the sensor, the suitcase emitted a beep, and he opened it to reveal a pair of control panels and some digital meters, embedded into the two halves of the suitcase.

“It’s a remarkable effect.” he said. “Probably they’ve told you nothing about it. They don’t want anyone to know. I was developing it on behalf of the Ministry of Defence; a poor choice of name for a ministry if ever there was one.

“I discovered it myself. I’m probably the greatest living genius on the planet, false modesty aside. Tell me, are you familiar with LSD?”

“The stuff that rots the brains of hippies?”

He carried on as though I hadn’t said anything.

“The tiniest of doses, far smaller than ought to have any effect, completely deranges a person’s mind. It sets some sort of cascade in motion, a few hundred micrograms deftly pressing the brain’s levers.

“I discovered an analogous effect, except it involves very precise frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The right frequencies, passing directly through the skull, barely even interacting with the brain at all, can produce an overwhelming sense of despair. A feeling of deep hopelessness beyond anything you can possibly imagine.”

“Sounds lovely.” I told him. “What a fantastic innovation.”

“They wanted to keep it for themselves.”

He was becoming angry.

“The British government, that bunch of degenerate imbeciles, wanted only Britain to wield this power. Imagine! Any country they took it into their heads to quarrel with, they could immediately reduce to nothing but a collection of weeping halfwits.”

“If you want to tell me politicians are degenerate imbeciles, I’m with you there.”

He laughed, and I began to think perhaps I could get on his good side, if he had one, and persuade him to unchain me.

“I’ve tasted the power of the device.” he said, patting the suitcase. “Only the slightest taste, but that was enough to clear the scales from my eyes. I’m going to give the world a taste of its own medicine. When I activate the machine, half of Europe will fall into suicidal despair.”

The whole talk sounded ridiculous, but certainly it was true that whatever the device actually did, it was bad enough for our leaders to want it destroyed, rather than risk it falling into the wrong hands.

“Isn’t it possible that thing’s addled your brain?” I asked him. “What’s going to happen to you if you set it off?”

“That no longer matters.” he said, and he began to fiddle with the knobs and dials and buttons inside the suitcase.

“Is someone meeting you here? You might as well tell me; I can’t do anything about it now anyway.”

He gave a short sarcastic laugh.

“I simply needed a suitably high location from which to deploy it.”

“What kind of range does it have?”

“Hundreds of miles. But you’ll feel its greatest effect, since you’re sitting next to it.”

“You’re planning to kill yourself?”

“In effect, yes.” he said.

“Just to send some sort of message?”

“You’ve got it.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“You will.” he said.

I tried pulling at the bolts that held my handcuffs to the rock, but there was no shifting them.

“I wouldn’t bother.” he said, over his shoulder.

Eventually he sat on the ground facing me and said, “It’s time.”

“Wait,” I said, “you don’t have to —”

But then, with a horrible grin that will remain seared into my memory for the rest of my life, he casually flicked a switch.

It’s impossible to really convey what happened next. The expression on his face changed immediately to one expressing a kind of blank horror. To me, this facial expression of his seemed indescribably terrifying, as though I was looking upon something wholly unnatural and evil, something no human eye should ever see.

It appeared to me that there was no longer anything human in him at all, but only a pitiless malevolence, as if his bodily frame was now inhabited only by a spirit of distilled destruction, yet at the same time his face seemed to express a pure and unfathomable suffering, which somehow failed to evoke pity in me nonetheless.

My mind immediately attempted to run to the possibility of escape or rescue, and there, instead of comfort, I found only hopelessness swarming with every evil in the world, assembled together like a demon horde.

Every catastrophe of history seemed to crowd my mind, pushing out every other thought: tortures ancient and modern, gulags, the murder of innocents, hideous diseases of the mind and body; all suffused with a spirit that flickered somewhere between intentional malice and an uncaring purposelessness.

The entire universe seemed nothing but a yawning abyss, existing only to grind sentient suffering beings in its gears.

I cried out in anguish, and as I did so, Delittle took my gun, placed it in his mouth, and blew his brains out.

His lifeless body fell backwards against the rock behind him, his features still contorted into an expression of utter terror.

I prayed for death but nothing with even the smallest measure of goodness seemed to hear my prayers.

In total, this terrible experience can have gone on for only a minute or two, yet it seemed to last for years. Slowly I became aware of the sound of an engine, growing ever-louder, the sound imbued with a monstrous and ineffable animosity.

I don’t remember becoming unconscious. I only remember awaking surrounded by pieces of wreckage. The terrible feeling was gone, replaced by a gnawing depressive sensation whose awfulness at least lay within the bounds of the ordinary.

I spotted pieces of helicopter blade and realised a helicopter had crashed directly in front of me, part of it landing on Delittle and smashing his infernal machine. A logo indicating that the helicopter was intended for mountain rescue was visible on parts of the wreckage. It certainly wasn’t hard to imagine why it had crashed; no-one could have piloted a helicopter successfully anywhere close to Delittle’s invention while it was running.

Somehow I didn’t spot the corpses at first. They were strewn among the broken pieces of copter. I counted three, besides Delittle’s mangled body, then I realised that the one closest to me was actually still alive. His arm was broken and bloody, but he was in one piece. He lifted his head and groggily watched me for a moment.

He shuffled over to me and began to fiddle with my restraints. He didn’t seem surprised by them. I would later learn, and was already beginning to suspect, that the mountain rescue logo was only serving as a disguise, and in reality the helicopter had contained military personnel charged with killing Delittle by whatever means they had available and, quite likely, me as well in the process.

Now my putative assassin had become my saviour.

“You’ll have to get the keys off his body.” I said, nodding towards the remains of Delittle.

“Fair point.” he said. He was English.

He retrieved the keys and unfastened me.

“Is anyone else coming?” I asked him.

“I don’t think so.” he said.

“Can you stand?”

He forced himself up.

“Looks like it, mate.” he said.

“Can you walk?”

“I reckon so.”

“Then let’s get out of here before the real mountain rescue turn up.”

I watched him to see his reaction. He didn’t contradict me. By build and bearing I’d say he was SAS, or some other elite military unit.

“Wait a minute.” he said, and he began to search among the wreckage.

His arm was bent at an odd angle and I don’t know how he could bear the pain, but I suppose they train them pretty well.

Soon he found what he was looking for: an unusually large grenade.

“You’re going to have to do it.” he said. “When we’re clear I need you to throw this at the crash site.”

I didn’t bother asking questions. I knew better.

We made our way along the hillside till we found a dip that could cover us.

“Take cover.” I told him.

In the distance I could already see hikers making their way towards us. We didn’t have much time.

Once he was in a safe position I threw the grenade, then threw myself down the slope.

There was no boom, only a rising crackling sound. An intense white light shone over the ridge behind which we hid, heat searing the snow. After it died down I scrambled back up the slope to look, and it appeared as though the crash site had been levelled, with the wreckage and the corpses pulverised. All that remained were charred blackened metal pieces.

My companion insisted on checking it himself, in spite of the pain he must have been in. After that we made our way towards the village.

At first I thought we had saved Europe. My boss was pleased with my work, even though, in truth, I had done almost nothing of use and had almost ended a basket case, but for the intervention of a fortuitous accident—or God, if you believe that kind of thing.

However, as I walked around London in the weeks afterwards, composing my thoughts, I found I wasn’t so sure.

On almost everyone’s face I saw, or thought I saw, the same worn-out bleak expression.

The device’s brief run had caused some serious problems in the immediate area, within a hundred or so miles; there had been a number of suicides and an even greater number of fatal accidents, but not so many that the governments of France, Italy and Switzerland weren’t able to control the flow of information and prevent anyone raising awkward questions.

The period of activation had been mercifully short.

It was only afterwards that I began to wonder if the real sting of the machine wasn’t in its aftermath. In the same way that the fallout from a nuclear bomb can cause more damage than the actual explosion, this device had shown people something that it was impossible to forget, inflicting grievous psychic wounds that may never heal.

Once you have looked into the abyss, you can never forget it’s there, hovering on the edge of ordinary life, remaining just out of sight, waiting patiently for its victims to momentarily lose their balance and fall into its unknowable depths.

What light can dissolve the shadows that still cling to people’s minds? Has the machine dealt us a mortal blow?

These questions remain unanswered.

“How have you been since the accident?” asked the older of the two men, who wore a slightly ridiculous long beige raincoat and possessed a rather avuncular air, with his fringe of grey hair and hawk-like nose.

But behind this amiable front, Schelling sensed, was something altogether more dangerous.

“OK more or less.” said Schelling.

“That’s not what we’ve heard.” said the younger man, who wore a dark grey suit with a blue shirt and could almost have passed for an accountant were it not for his unusual accent.

“What’ve you heard?” Schelling asked.

Neither of the two men replied. They only regarded him steadily and expectantly.

“I’ve had some memory issues.” said Schelling. “There are things I can’t remember.”

He laughed nervously, but neither of the two men opposite him even displayed as much as a hint of a smile.

“Sometimes I think I remember things that I can’t possibly remember. It’s strange. But none of this affects my work, nor my ability to keep secrets.”

“We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t absolute vital for national security.” said the older man.

“We are winning the war against Russia,” said the younger man, “but victory is not yet assured. If your work were to fall into Russian hands …”

He let the sentence trail off, and the older man finished his thought.

“Let’s just say, the consequences could be significant.”

“I quite understand.” said Schelling.

“After the war, we can revisit the situation.” said the older man. “We’re only asking you to keep your lips sealed until then.”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Anything.” said the older man, with a good effort at a pleasant smile.

“The only reason I was able to develop the module alone, without Dr. Asgrove’s oversight, is Simon Quint stepped in and funded my private laboratory. Now I’m wondering if this isn’t exactly why he funded it. People in your organisations saw this coming and persuaded him to step in.”

The two men laughed jocularly and exchanged knowing glances.

“I’m afraid we can’t comment on that.” said the older man.

“There’s one last thing I’m obliged to mention.” said the younger man, suddenly serious. “It gives me no pleasure to say this, but, well, let’s say I’m contractually obliged.”

“Yes?” said Schelling, somewhat alarmed by the man’s tone.

“If you were to share the secret of how the module works, that would be considered a treasonable offence.”

“Death sentence, I’m afraid.” said the older man.

They stared at him intently, as if gauging his reaction.

“I quite understand.” said Schelling. “On that score, you’ve nothing to fear.”

The older man smiled.

“Splendid.” he said.

After the men left, Schelling spent some time staring blankly after them, at the closed door.

“Weirdos.” he said, quietly to himself.

Then, when he was sure they had left the building, he got up and went to Lab C, to resume his work and to see what Dr. Bill Asgrove was up to.

Bill was tinkering with the the Ark as usual. He had Tchaikovsky playing on a small pair of underpowered speakers on a bench at the side of the room.

“I take it they’re finished with you?” he asked, without looking up.

“Apparently.” said Schelling.

“You’re not allowed to tell me how your power module works, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, I daresay I can live without knowing.”

“After the war, I can probably tell you.”

Asgrove stood up to face him, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a mini-probe in the other.

“Something to look forward to.” he said, with a brief, professional smile.

Next to him, the Ark stood open, revealing the inner cavity—big enough to hold ten people. The machine towered over the men.

“We should probably conduct another stability test.” said Schelling. “Give it one final check.”

“Yes, probably.” said Asgrove, turning to face the machine. “Hopefully it’ll never actually get used anyway.”

“If it is ever used, it might be the only thing that protects the top brass from nuclear destruction.”

“Personally I think we’d be better off without them.” said Asgrove. “They got us into this stupid war.”

“Turn that rubbish off.” said a voice.

The voice belonged to the Administrator, who was traversing Lab C on his way to somewhere else.

“Not a fan of classical music?” said Asgrove.

The Administrator stopped and then approached them.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re at war with Russia.” he said. “Show a bit of patriotism for once.”

Asgrove glared at him for a moment, then went over to the speakers and turned them off.

“Happy now?” he said.

The Administrator continued to glare at him for some seconds, then hurried off out of the exit.

“What an idiot.” said Asgrove.

“He’s just doing his job.” said Schelling.

“Just following orders.” said Asgrove, dryly.

“Forget about him.” said Schelling.

Asgrove took a deep breath, then clapped his hands together.

“Right.” he said. “Forgotten. How about you double-check the module while I tune the primary?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

For several hours they worked patiently, tweaking and testing.

It was almost evening when Asgrove spotted Schelling out of the corner of his eye, staggering into the middle of the largely-empty space between the front of the vast laboratory and the machine.

“You all right?” he asked.

Schelling clutched his head, swaying slightly.

“I think so.” he said.

Asgrove hurried over to him.

“Come and sit down, old boy.” he said, and he gently led Schelling to one of the chairs arranged around a cheap plastic table over at the side of the room.

“Just got a bit dizzy.” said Schelling.

“I keep telling you, you shouldn’t have come back so quickly after the accident.” said Asgrove. “If we have to delay the launch, so be it. Whoever heard of scientists having launches anyway? It’s ridiculous. In my view, we should let them know when it’s working and they ought to be happy with whenever that is.”

He looked at Schelling, expecting a response, but Schelling only opened his mouth as though about to say something, then shut it again.

“What?” said Asgrove.

“Nothing.” said Schelling. “Just … I’ve got the most incredible sense of deja-vu.”

“You need to be at home.” said Asgrove. “I’ll drive you.”

“No, I’ll be fine.” said Schelling. “I just need a few minutes.”

“Well, take however long you need and then get the hell out of here. You’ve done more than enough for today.

“I’ve still got work to do. Honestly, I’m OK.”

“David,” said Asgrove, “go home. I insist.”

Schelling glanced at Asgrove’s serious expression, then at the machine, then back at Asgrove.

“All right.” he said, finally. “One hour. I’ll just finish what I’m doing first.”

“Now, David.” said Asgrove. “Don’t make me go and fetch that idiot.”

He was referring to the Administrator.

Schelling sighed.

“OK, I’m going.” he said. “I just need ten minutes.”

“Can I get you a tea or some water or something?” said Asgrove.

“No, really, I’m fine.”

Fifteen minutes later, Schelling walked home. Once home, he took a frozen ready meal from the freezer and put it in the microwave.

When he took it out, the lasagna was still slightly frozen in the middle, but he ate it anyway, absent-mindedly.

After that he flicked through science periodicals for a bit, then he went to bed.

He was already half asleep when he had an idea.

He hurried down to the basement and fired up the little test device he’d put together the previous weekend. As before, it failed to reach a steady resonant frequency. He took a screwdriver and began to tweak the little variable capacitors and resistors.

“I might just be on the right track.” he muttered to himself.

It was three hours before he was finally somewhat satisfied, and he turned the machine off and went to bed, still carrying the screwdriver, unable to decide whether or not to go back again and have one final go at tweaking the machine into full stability.

At a certain point, while lying on top of the bedsheets, still making calculations in his head, he simply passed out, falling abruptly into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, it was dark except for a flashlight, and a dark figure was standing over him holding a hypodermic needle. He lashed out wildly at the figure, panicking, forgetting the screwdriver was still in his hand. The screwdriver embedded itself in the man’s eye. The man fell back, shouting something in Russian, dropping the syringe. Schelling bolted out of bed and switched on the light.

Two unknown men were in his bedroom, wearing ski masks. The one who’d been standing at the far side of his bed was suddenly running towards him.

Schelling wasn’t sure why he did it—it was as though some unconscious part of his brain outpaced the conscious parts—but he dove towards the syringe. When the second man fell on him, he stabbed the syringe into the man’s ankle, emptying it.

The second man crumpled to the floor.

The first man, still howling pitifully, pulled a gun out of a holster at his side. Schelling yanked it out of his hand—the man was in so much pain that he offered little resistance—and pointed it at him, staggering backwards. When the man suddenly lurched at him with a howl he fired the gun, and the man dropped to the ground.

Schelling’s heart was threatening to explode out of his chest. He sat down heavily on the bed.

When he’d managed to fractionally calm down he went to the kitchen and poured himself a stiff gin. Then he went back to the bedroom and surveyed the scene.

One man was dead on the floor, quite a lot of blood seeping out of him, a screwdriver still stuck in his eye. The other man seemed in much better shape but he was absolutely unconscious.

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my bedroom?” muttered Schelling.

There could only be one answer. These men were Russian spies, and they had intended to kidnap him and extract information from him. A horrible thought occurred to him and he went to the window.

A nondescript van was parked on the street.

He watched it for a bit but could see no sign of anyone moving about inside it. He got dressed and then went out to examine it more closely.

Indeed, the van was empty, and unlocked. In the back were some ropes and handcuffs. He took them back into the house with him. If the substance in the syringe was a tranquilliser, it was only a matter of time before the man he’d injected woke up again.

He was in the kitchen, nervous but somewhat off his guard, when the man in question lunged at him drunkenly out of seemingly nowhere, conscious but still full of tranquilliser. The two men collapsed together on the floor. Schelling managed to scrabble to his feet first; he grabbed a kitchen knife.

The man was up on his feet again faster than he expected, and without meaning to, he practically threw himself on the knife. For a second it seemed he hadn’t realised he’d been stabbed, and he tried to grapple Schelling onto the floor, but then he sank to his knees, swearing in Russian.

“I-I’ll get you an ambulance.” stammered Schelling, but then the man keeled over completely.

Schelling felt for the pulse in his neck, but no sooner had he successfully located it than he felt it turn irregular and then stop, the man’s heart emitting two final slow heavy pulses, and then no more.

He pulled the man’s mask off and was shocked to see that the man appeared quite young; still in his twenties.

“You didn’t leave me with any choice.” said Schelling. “I’m so sorry. This could all have been avoided.”

He put the knife down and washed his hands. Then he went to look for his phone.

He was on the verge of dialling emergency services when a new unsettling idea shaped itself in his mind.

Obviously, he couldn’t tell the police exactly what he was working on. He would have to give a statement about the whole thing, omitting what was clearly the central motive behind the appearance of the men in his house, and he’d be lucky if they didn’t lock him up. He hadn’t intended to kill either of the two men, but the police would definitely consider his actions to represent excessive force.

It appeared, from an external perspective, as if a maniac had launched an unprovoked attack on a pair of half-witted burglars. That was undoubtedly what the police would think.

He ran his fingers through his hair and paced back and forth.

“Dear God!” he said to himself. “What a mess.”

Asgrove. He would have to discuss the matter with Asgrove. Obviously the bodies, meanwhile, would have to be stashed somewhere temporarily. But where?

He considered putting them in the van. The problem was, someone might conceivably see him, dragging two corpses down his driveway, even at this hour.

Then the solution hit him. He would put them in the cold room.

In his basement was a room he used for performing experiments involving supercooled liquids. The entire room was chilled to below the freezing point of water, for the purpose of reducing ambient heating of the apparatus. He hadn’t been in there since the accident, but he had kept the power on, to avoid unwanted thermal expansion in his finely-tuned apparatus.

He began to drag the corpse in his kitchen down the cellar stairs. Once the body was next to the cold room door in his cellar, he fetched the other man from upstairs, the man’s head bumping unpleasantly on every step as Schelling pulled him down feet first.

The process left an enormous bloody trail all the way down the stairs. Fortunately the stairs were uncarpeted—Schelling had always hated carpets, considering them unhygienic—so the the inevitable cleanup operation wouldn’t be too taxing.

Once the two bodies were laid out neatly next to each other, he unlocked the cold room and swung open the heavy metal door with its layers of internal insulation.

There, a sight greeted him that caused him to stumble backwards in horror.

The room was filled with frozen bodies.

He stared at them in disbelief. Dozens of them, heaped up around the edges of the room.

In a state of shock he dragged the two new corpses on top of the others, then slammed the door shut and leaned back against it, shaking. What did this mean?

He abruptly vomited onto the floor. Then he staggered out of the room, clutching the walls for support.

Lying on the sofa, half-formed memories seemed to flood into his mind, like fragments of dreams.

He had killed those men. All of them. He was sure of it.

Now that he thought of it, the killing of the two spies had seemed surprisingly easy, as though he was used to killing. For that matter, why had he really fallen asleep with a screwdriver in his hand, a potential weapon?

Was it possible that he, David, was a serial killer? A man who murdered not only when necessary, but for pleasure?

He found himself shouting: “No! No!”

Then he clutched his head.

There were things in there from before the accident that he hadn’t wanted to remember. He knew that now.

What if someone came to his house? It was possible that some friend or acquaintance would stop by to check on him at some point in the next few days.

He jumped to his feet and began to look for cleaning equipment. He located some cloths, gloves, bleach, and a bucket, and began to scrub at the blood that was now practically everywhere between the bedroom and the cellar.

When he was finished, he went back to the cold room and, avoiding looking at the mountain of corpses as much as possible, located the key to the van in one of the men’s pockets.

He drove the van only a few blocks and left it in the street, with the door slightly open and the keys in the ignition, then he walked home.

Back at his house, he took the blister pack of pills the doctors had given him for headaches from the bathroom cabinet and swallowed three of them.

He spent what little was left of the night lying on his bed gazing at the ceiling in the dark, thoughts racing through his mind.

When the morning arrived, he went into work early, staring blankly around him like a zombie.

His subsequent actions were carried out on auto-pilot, in a kind of fugue, a mixture of horror and guilt having obliterated all possibility of true rational thought from his brain. He flicked open the cover of the power module, turned all the faders up to maximum and shorted out all the fuses.

The Ark was supposed to create swirling magnetic fields so powerful that they could deflect light itself, even gamma rays, but when supplied suddenly with all the power his module could muster, it ought to disintegrate him in a nanosecond. A painless death. Instant oblivion.

He stood for a moment staring up at the Ark towering above him, his eyes moist but blank. Then he opened the doors, stepped inside, and pulled the doors shut.

He entered the activation code in the keypad and pressed the red button.

There was a noise, distant at first, like the engine of some great spacecraft starting up, rising in pitch until almost a roar.

He closed his eyes.

White light. Voices. A faint smell of disinfectant.

He opened his eyes suddenly to see a ceiling tiled with polystyrene. With a start he realised there was a tube down his throat, forcing him to breathe. A machine beeped out his heart rate, suddenly quickening.

At the side of the room, a nurse in blue overalls was attending to something. He looked over at her with frightened eyes, but he couldn’t call her.

He slapped his hand on the bed on which he lay. She turned around, her eyes widened, then she hurried off.

Soon a doctor appeared.

“Dr. Schelling.” he said. “Good to have you back with us. I’m afraid there was an accident, but you’re in one piece. You seem to be breathing well so we’ll get this tube out of your throat. OK?”

He could do nothing but blink and give the slightest of nods.

Schelling’s subsequent recovery was rapid. Only three days later he was able to use a phone to connect to the internet and catch up on his messages. Even so, the accident he had been involved in—which had apparently involved a rogue magnetic pulse of stupendous power—had brought about a partial amnesia and other psychological symptoms which, while comparatively mild, were disconcerting nonetheless.

A week and a half later he was back at work, and two weeks after that, Asgrove informed him there was two government men who wanted to talk to him in his office.

He went there immediately, somewhat nervously, and found a man with the nose of a hawk and a fringe of grey hair waiting for him, and another younger man in a dark grey suit and a blue shirt with an accent that he couldn’t quite place.

“Dr. Schelling?” said the older man.

“Yes.” said Schelling.

“Please sit down. We need to ask you … well, let’s call it a favour.”

After the men had departed, Schelling went to Lab C. Bill was tinkering with the Ark and playing Tchiakovsky on a pair of tinny computer speakers. Schelling experienced a strong sense of deja-vu.

He went home a little early that evening, feeling dizzy. Even so, he found himself unable to sleep that night, and he went down to the basement to work on a test device he’d begun to construct.

He finally fell asleep several hours later with a screwdriver in his hand.

He awoke suddenly at some point during the night to find a figure looming over him. He scrambled to the other side of the bed in a panic, then he realised there was a strange dark shape on the other side of the bed also. He lashed out at it, and before he could gather his wits, he realised he’d stuck the screwdriver in someone’s neck. The man slumped against him and he felt warm blood gushing over him.

The first man scrambled towards him across the double bed and Schelling saw dimly in the near-complete darkness that there was something in the man’s hand. He grabbed the man’s wrist, pulled the screwdriver—of which he’d never actually let go—out of the other man’s neck and stabbed it frantically at the other dark shape.

The man let out a horrible gurgling howl.

Schelling jumped forwards off the end of the bed and ran to switch on the light.

He saw one man slumped over his bed, blood spurting out of his neck, and another man howling due to a screwdriver stuck in his eye, holding a hypodermic needle.

The scene was shocking and yet, somehow familiar.

Acting on a kind of curious instinct, Schelling grabbed the syringe from the man and injected him with it. The man fell to the ground head first, landing on the screwdriver and driving it further into his head. His body convulsed for a while, then the spasms gradually slowed.

“Who the hell are you?” said Schelling frantically, tearing at his hair.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew exactly who they were, even though he could consciously articulate neither their names nor their purpose for being in his bedroom and attacking him.

After drinking two glasses of wine from a bottle in his fridge he arrived at a decision. He would put the bodies in the cold room while he decided what best to do next.

He dragged the bodies down the stairs to the door of the cold room, and opened the cold room door.

It was then that he observed the shocking fact that the cold room was already full of bodies.

It took Schelling a while to get a grip on himself again, and when he finally did so, it was at best a partial grip. Perhaps the only thing that really kept him functioning was the unshakeable feeling that everything now happening to him was inevitable, and therefore the correct course of action.

After dragging the bodies into the cold room he located a bottle of bleach and began to scrub the bloodstains off the floor and stairs.

He had progressed only halfway down the stairs when he ran out of bleach.

Schelling held the bottle of bleach up to the light, and it was then that he noticed the fingerprints adhering to the white container. He looked at his hands and then again at the bottle. His hands were covered in blood mixed with water, but the bottle seemed to have dried bloody fingerprints on it.

After driving the van parked outside around the block and leaving it there, he lay awake the whole rest of the night, thinking. Was it possible that the machine … but no, that couldn’t be.

At five in the morning he went back to the cellar and checked the bodies in the cold room.

As he had feared and suspected, all of them were identical copies of the two men, differing only in their precise injuries. The bodies furthest to the back, undoubtedly the oldest, showed the greatest variety of injuries, some having even been bludgeoned to death.

Later, he was to discover dried blood on the base of his bedside lamp.

Gradually the injuries had converged, the more recent of the deaths all involving a screwdriver.

At seven o’clock he went to the lab and waited for Asgrove to turn up. He was going to need Asgrove’s help.

Dr. Asgrove appeared at half-past seven. Schelling had intended to explain the whole thing to him, but the expression on Asgrove’s face was unmistakable and shook him to his core.

Asgrove had not expected him to return.

He faked ordinary civility, explaining that he had been unable to sleep and so had decided to get started early. On impulse, since Asgrove was clearly attempting to process something mentally and drawing a blank, he told Asgrove that he’d slept at his sister’s house, because she had asked him to take care of her dog while she was away visiting other relatives.

He meant, and Asgrove would assume, that that was why he wasn’t currently being interrogated by Russian spies. The men hadn’t been able to locate him.

Then it occurred to him that Asgrove would undoubtedly relay this information to the Russians, and they might well turn up at his sister’s house the following night.

There was nothing to be done but to explain everything to the Administrator immediately. He went directly to the Administrator’s office, telling Asgrove he needed to discuss a draught coming from the window in his office.

The Administrator listened gravely, and expressed only mild surprise at the miraculous powers Schelling now imputed to the Ark. Asgrove even took Schelling’s attempted self-dissolution in his stride.

“What are we going to do?” said Schelling, at the end of it. “Asgrove’s working for the Russians. I’m convinced of it.”

“I’ve suspected this for a while.” said the Administrator. “Here’s what I propose. We’ll get a van and load the bodies into it. All of them except those last two, which we’ll show to the authorities. We’ll make several trips if necessary. We’ll incinerate them in the furnace attached to Lab E. I’ll simply tell them we’ve been experimenting on pig carcasses. At night there’s no-one there. And I suggest we keep the whole thing to ourselves for a while.”

“You believe me?” said Schelling.

“Why wouldn’t I?” said the Administrator.

Later that night, an exhausted Shellling made three trips to and from the incinerator with Administrator.

“Do you really hate Russians?” Schelling asked, as they carried the last of the bodies up the cellar stairs to the waiting van outside.

“No.” said the Administrator, laughing. “This war, it’s just a thing between the politicians. Like every stupid war. You see, my wife’s Russian and she plays Tchaikovsky incessantly. That’s why I can’t bear to hear it at work as well.”

Schelling burst into uncontrollable laughter, and so did the Administrator. They were forced to temporarily rest the body on the cellar steps while they wiped tears from their eyes.

After a couple of minutes, the Administrator forced himself to be serious again.

“Tomorrow I’ll inform the authorities and they’ll arrest that worthless traitor Asgrove.” he said.

“And the phenomenon?” asked Schelling.

“The world’s not ready for a time machine.” said the Administrator. “Continue with your normal work. With a bit of luck no-one will ever figure out what it can do. And please don’t try to kill yourself again.”

“Don’t worry.” said Schelling. “I feel much better now.”

It’s been bothering me that I’ve never really taken the time to fully understand all the possible paradoxes involved in time travel. A long time ago I did study relativity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland but the only true paradox we got into was the grandfather paradox. Often this is regarded as a showstopper for time travel in physics, and as the key reason why time travel to the past is probably not possible.

So in this video I’m going to discuss all the time travel paradoxes that I’ve been able to unearth. I hope you find this exploration of time travel interesting, and next week we’ll get back to regular scheduling, so to speak.

First, let’s talk about time travel to the future.

It is actually quite possible, theoretically, to travel to the future. In a sense, we’re already doing that. If you can somehow slow your own bodily processes so that you don’t experience the passing of time at the normal rate, you can accomplish true time travel into the future.

You could potentially do this by freezing yourself, if only you were able to prevent the freezing process turning your cells to mush, but the theory of relativity also predicts that time travel to the future could be accomplished by travelling somewhere at a really high speed, then returning to the point where you started.

There are ferocious technical barriers to actually accomplishing this, of course, but there is no theoretical principle that actually forbids it.

The only paradox associated with time travel to the future is the twin paradox, which is well understood—even by me—and is not actually a paradox at all. If a traveller journeys a long way from the Earth at a high speed, then turns around and comes back again, relativity tells us that less time will have passed for him than for the people who stayed on the Earth. A thousand years may have gone by on the Earth, while only some weeks have passed for the traveller. He has effectively travelled to the Earth’s future.

The name “twin paradox” arises from imagining that the traveller is one of a pair of identical twins. The traveller arrives back on the Earth to find he is younger than his twin. But isn’t the situation symmetrical, and movement relative? Can’t the twin argue that, due to symmetry and the relativity of motion, he should be younger than the traveller? That is, if motion is relative, can’t we view the stay-at-home twin as being the one who travelled, while the traveller twin actually stayed in one place?

After all, the Earth is constantly moving around the sun, and the sun is constantly in motion around the galactic centre. It’s not as though Planet Earth is somehow stationary. Actually, according to relativity, there is no such thing as stationary in an absolute sense.

However, this is simply not the case, and there is no true paradox.

The resolution of the problem doesn’t have to do with the traveler rotating to head back again—which is entirely unnecessary—nor with the traveler having to accelerate and decelerate, which may be necessary in practice but is not needed to resolve the paradox.

The simple fact is that, while there is a frame of reference—that is, a point of view—in which the Earth remains stationary the whole time, there is no single point of view in which the traveller remains stationary. If we adopt the point of view that the traveller is stationary on his outward-bound journey, then from that same point of view he is not stationary on his inward-bound journey.

While travelling away from the Earth, if the traveller argues that it’s the Earth that’s moving and not himself, then what will he think of another spaceman who’s currently following the exact route the traveller will have to take to get back to the Earth? He’s certainly not going to view that fellow as stationary.

In contrast, the people on the Earth can view themselves as existing in one single stationary frame of reference the entire time.

The traveller, in a sense, really does travel, while the Earth, leaving aside its journey around the sun, does not.

A long time ago I wrote an extensive, accurate explanation of this on the Quora website, but eventually I deleted my account there out of frustration because people kept reporting my answers and Quora kept deleting them in response to the reports. I was unfailingly polite to everyone, even in the face of considerable provocation, but the climate change people didn’t like me because I argued that there is no remotely provable mechanism by which our CO2 emissions could heat the globe by more than a degree or so, and the transgender people didn’t like me because I argued that there are only two sexes, and it’s beyond the power of science to change one into the other.

So that, along with my hundreds of my other answers, is lost.

I don’t really like politics or social issues but I do think we should all be able to speak the truth as we see it. Otherwise what’s the point in speaking at all?

Anyway, in summary, time travel to the future is theoretically possible and is paradox-free; it’s just technically difficult.

Now let’s turn to the very real paradoxes associated with time travel to the past.

If you first assume that something is possible, then you uncover paradoxes associated with that thing, sometimes that’s very illuminating. The existence of a paradox might mean that the thing you’ve hypothesised is actually impossible, but it might also mean that some common underlying assumption—that is, an assumption that underlies the way we think about reality—might be incorrect.

A great example of this is the paradox Einstein uncovered when he thought about what it would be like to travel alongside a beam of light. Einstein realised that Maxwell’s equations, which brought together everything known about electric and magnetic fields, and which predicted the existence of invisible radiation, seemed to indicate that light could only travel at a certain fixed speed. A beam of light could not appear stationary, in the same way that a moving train appears stationary from the point of view of the people in a car moving alongside the train at the same speed. According to Maxwell’s equations, light depends upon movement for its very existence.

This led Einstein to hypothesise in his famous 1905 paper on electrodynamics that the speed of light always appears the same, regardless of the speed of the observer.

Apparently unbeknownst to Einstein, this strange phenomenon had already been experimentally observed by the American physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, in 1887.

Nothing else behaves like this: if you run after a ball, the speed of the ball slows relative to you, otherwise you’d never be able to catch it. Hurrying after a beam of light seems to make no difference at all; it’s always rushing ahead of you by the same relative speed.

With that in mind, it may somehow be useful to consider the paradoxes of time travel, even if we currently have no workable method of actually travelling backwards in time.

The theory of relativity arguably appears to predict that backwards time travel is actually possible, but it doesn’t give us a workable, practical method for actually doing it.

The most famous example of a time travel paradox is undoubtedly the grandfather paradox. If you could travel to the past, you could kill your own grandfather before he could even reproduce with your grandmother.

Or, if killing your ancestors doesn’t appeal, you could simply travel backwards in time and prevent your grandfather from meeting your grandmother.

In either case, how can your parents ever have been born, and how were you then able to travel backwards in time, since you can’t exist?

This is the key reason as to why many physicists consider time travel to the past to be impossible.

The name of this paradox derives from a short science fiction story by Nathaniel Schachner, called Ancestral Voices, which is out of copyright in most countries. It was originally published in a magazine called Astounding Stories in 1933.

In that story, a scientist travels backwards in time to the year 452 AD and kills one of Attila’s the Hun’s fellow Huns, who turns out to be a distant direct ancestor of the scientist’s. This causes everyone descended from this particular Hun to vanish instantly, including the scientist himself.

The resolution to the story is a little too convenient—as is the case with the resolutions to many of my own stories. In reality it’s very hard to envisage what might happen if you could kill your own ancestors.

It’s not necessary to resort to imagine tangling with your ancestors in order to understand the broader nature of the problem. You could get into your time machine and then travel backwards in time and stop yourself getting into the time machine in the first place.

If you never get into your time machine, how can you have turned up in the past to stop yourself going backwards in time?

We can even dispense with the human element altogether, and this leads us to Polchinski’s Paradox, proposed by string theorist Joseph Polchinski in 1990.

A billiard ball is fired with the correct trajectory to enter a wormhole, which transports it backwards in time. The billiard ball then collides with itself in the past, before it can enter the wormhole. So, the billiard ball never enters the wormhole and never travels backwards in time.

Then there are two billiard balls, and where did the second one even come from, if the first one did not enter the wormhole?

Some argue that this simply cannot happen, and the laws of physics must somehow forbid it—even if, according to some physicists—wormholes offer a real possibility for travelling backwards in time.

Perhaps the second copy of the billiard ball can only collide with the first in such a way that the first billiard ball still enters the wormhole. Perhaps, without the collision with its future self, it would not have entered the wormhole at all.

In this view, only self-consistent events can occur in the context of time travel. Perhaps you can meet your own grandfather, but you can’t kill him—or at least not until he’s conceived your mother or father. And perhaps that’s always what happened.

For the writer this idea offers a partial resolution of time travel paradoxes; whatever happened is always what happened, with time loops included.

This idea is known as Novikov’s self-consistency principle.

The Spanish film Timecrimes from 2007 is one of the few films about time travel that adhere to Novikov’s principle, and I would say is the best film I’ve ever seen about time travel. Along with the better-known film Looper, from 2012, which does not adhere to Novikov’s principle, it portrays a relatively realistic time machine, created by people who seem like they might actually have built a time machine.

Relativity by itself does seem to allow for backwards time travel, via so-called wormholes, which involve heavily warped spacetime, if you leave the grandfather paradox aside.

It may be that time travel to the past is possible, but Novikov’s self-consistency principle forms an additional law of nature, insisting upon only forms of backwards time-travel that do not result in outright paradox.

Igor Novikov was a Russian physicist, and the principle named after him was first formally proposed in his 1989 paper, Time machine and self-consistent evolution in problems with self-interaction.

We can also look at the grandfather paradox in a slightly different way. Take, for example, the Hitler paradox. We travel backwards in time to kill Hitler, before he got started with his whole disturbing project. But then, in the future, there’s no Hitler, so why would anyone have gone backwards in time to kill him, since he no longer exists?

Killing Hitler would therefore have to be forbidden by Novikov’s principle.

Backwards time travel finds its greatest paradoxes in interactions between the time traveller and the events that led to him to travelling backwards in time.

The “Meeting Yourself” paradox broadly considers what happens when a time traveller meets his past self. The grandfather paradox is example of this, as is a form of the bootstrap paradox.

Suppose you develop instructions for building a time machine, and you travel backwards in time and take those instructions to your past self, who then builds the very time machine that you then use to travel backwards in time.

I tackle this idea in my story Letters from the Future, in which an amateur scientist sends notes back to his past self that facilitate his invention of a time machine.

The question is, where did the knowledge of how to build the time machine actually come from?

Without a time machine, the inventor cannot meet his past self nor send messages to his past self, so the time machine cannot exist.

It seems as though these letters have no ultimate cause. The whole process has no way to get started, or in other words, to bootstrap itself, where the term bootstrap arises from the impossible idea of pulling yourself upwards via straps attached to your own boots.

Even if one alters the past in the most minimal way possible, the butterfly effect comes into play. Tiny changes in the past may well result in very large changes in the future. If, for example, on the day that Hitler was conceived, Hitler’s mother had had a headache—perhaps occasioned only by something small, like one cup of coffee too many or too few—the entire Nazi regime and the second world war might never have happened.

In general, the effects of small things seem to cascade over time into large changes; this is predicted both by classical physics and by computer models of physical processes, such as the weather, as Edward Lorenz discovered in 1961.

It then seems like any alteration to the past could easily produce changes that violate Novikov’s self-consistency principle, unless Novikov’s principle is a fundamental law of nature which the universe somehow enforces.

If Novikov’s principle really is a law of nature, we would expect backwards time travel to lead to various forms of predestination paradox. These aren’t true logical paradoxes, but they seem counter intuitive.

Sticking with the Hitler example, you might go back in time to kill Hitler, only to find, following the self-consistency principle, that your actions actually lead to the rise of Hitler.

If Novikov’s principle is really a fundamental law of the universe, then whatever happened in the past was, in a way, predestined to happen; at least in the sense that you can’t change it. Any attempt to change the past must only lead to the exact same things happening that have already happened.

Causal loops in general seem problematic for time travel, although the idea of self-consistency partially resolves their paradoxical nature. When time travel is involved, a sequence of events can cause itself. A causes B which causes A, and it’s unclear how the whole thing could have got started.

But then, let’s not forget, it’s unclear how the entire universe got started.

Consider the Münchhausen trilemma. This illustrates the impossibility of ultimately proving anything using logic alone.

Logic is a process of reasoning, which must always rest on certain axioms.

If you then try to use logic to prove your axioms, you will require other axioms.

There are three ways out of his, and none of them would be considered satisfactory by a logical positivist.

Either we must commit to an infinite regress of axioms, or else we must accept axioms that prove themselves in a circle, or else we must adopt the dogmatic approach and insist that our axioms are true without any further proof being needed.

We have here three forms of argument: circular, regressive and dogmatic.

The fictional Baron Munchausen after whom the trilemma is named, pulled himself and his horse out of a bog by his own hair: a form of bootstrapping.

A solution to a problem involving infinite regress satisfies few. Perhaps the Earth is supported by four elephants sitting on a giant turtle, but what is the turtle standing on? Does anyone really want an infinite tower of animals?

Perhaps we are made of atoms which are made of neutrons and protons, which are made of quarks, but what are quarks made of? Tiny strings, perhaps, and what are they made of?

The temptation, for scientists, religious believers and frustrated parents is always to fall back on a dogmatic argument: it just is. Superstrings aren’t made of anything else, and neither is God.

The alternative is some form of circular argument, where a thing causes itself. Perhaps even time is circular, with no beginning, and the future eventually leads to the past. But then the question remains: how did the whole thing get started, and without dogmatism, it’s impossible to answer.

Given that the universe itself seems altogether impossible, and certainly should not exist, arguments against causal loops in general seem weakened.

We can never state the ultimate cause of anything at all without resorting to dogmatism.

There are other arguments against backwards time travel which, while perhaps not appealing to everyone, carry weight with those of us who haven’t adopted science as our religion, at least not in its most materialistic version.

After Einstein developed the theory of relativity, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski showed that relativity could be understood in terms of a four-dimensional geometry. This involves the three dimensions of space with which we are all familiar—which we could think of as up-down, left-right and backwards and forwards—plus the addition of time as an additional pseudo-spatial dimension.

In this scheme, either the three dimensions of space or, more conventionally, the single time dimension, must be multiplied by the square root of minus one. The purpose of this whole shenanigans is to turn relativistic physics into a question of geometry.

The idea of time as the fourth dimension led some to take the idea very literally. The universe then becomes a four-dimensional structure in which the past, present and future are all simultaneously present.

But this isn’t, in truth, predicted by the theory of relativity. It’s only an assumption made in order to work with relativity geometrically. It fails to incorporate quantum physics, which, in important respects, removes linear predictability from physics, retaining it only at the statistical level.

The human eye is capable of perceiving even a single photon under the right conditions, and the behaviour of a single photon is not deterministically predictable, according to quantum physics. Physics does not, in fact, lead to a view of the future as necessarily predetermined. That so many people think it does, is, I think, a case of wishful thinking.

Without deterministic physics, categories of causation seem to become possible that defy any strict predictability, and cannot even always be subject to statistical analysis, and this unsettles many people.

A million subatomic particles behave in aggregate in a predictable way, but a single particle may affect, ultimately, the whole world, and its behaviour cannot be predicted.

The question of whether or not modern physics can be said to “allow room”, so to speak, for free will, is a huge topic. I’ve gone over all the arguments against free will quite carefully, and I find none of them at all convincing. But that’s a topic for a different video.

Instead of getting off on a tangent, let’s ask—if free will really does exist—what does this means for time travel to the past?

Suppose a person—let’s call him George—gets into a time machine and travels a week into the past. Then he goes to meet his former self. So now, there’s two of them.

Two distinct naming conventions are possible for the two Georges, if we want to distinguish them. Looking at the situation from the point of view of the original, past version of George, the George who travels backwards in time is another George, whom we could call George 2 or George B. The original George is then George 1 or George A.

This is the naming scheme used in the Spanish film Timecrimes, where a man named Hector travels backwards in time, becoming Hector 2 in the process.

On the other hand, we could view the situation from the perspective of the George who travels backwards in time. The George he encounters in the past, who is a past version of himself, would then be George 2, while the time traveller is George 1.

I’ll go here with the first naming convention; by travelling into the past, George becomes George 2. His original self in the past is George 1.

If we apply Novikov’s principle, it seems that George 1 now must get into the time machine after a week has passed, otherwise where did George 2 even come from?

But then George 1 seems to not have free will. He cannot choose to change his mind, even if George 2 begs him not to get into the machine for some reason. For that matter, it seems George 2 cannot prevent George 1 from getting into the machine by any means. He can neither kill him nor deter him.

I explore a scenario like this in my story Time Machine: A Terrible Idea.

There seems to be a conflict here between free will and Novikov’s principle.

Some people argue that the conflict is more apparent than real, since after all, free will is not the freedom to do absolutely anything; we are all subject to the laws of physics, and here is, perhaps, simply another law of physics that we are forced to obey under relevant circumstances.

But it is hard to see exactly why George 1 would have to get into the machine, and why George 2 wouldn’t be able to stop him. What form, exactly, would the intervention of the universe take?

If Novikov’s principle does not apply, then another interesting problem arises. Suppose George 1 does not get into the time machine, after meeting George 2. Then, from the moment that George 2 appears, there are two Georges, and always will be—at least till one of them dies, and even then the matter of which they are composed will still exist, even if decomposition radically changes its form.

This raises the question of whether, if the time machine can duplicate matter, another copy of George isn’t created every single time George gets into the machine, potentially creating a vast army of Georges.

Surely there was a point in time when George really had not created the machine, and could have chosen not to bother creating the machine. At that point there was only one George. Then George decides, of his own free will, to build the time machine, and he gets into it and travels back a week in time. Now the past seems to have been changed, and we have a whole week during which there were, in fact, two Georges.

Why wouldn’t yet another George be created, and a new version of the past be created with three Georges, if George gets into the time machine again?

If Novikov’s principle is real, there is only one version of the past, and it’s the version in which George builds the time machine and uses it to travel backwards in time. The only version of the past week that ever exists is the version in which there are two Georges. George could never have not decided to build the machine, and he could never choose to not travel backwards in time after he’s built it. For that one week, there were always two Georges.

If Novikov’s principle does not apply, an alternative possibility is that every time George travels backwards in time, a new version of the past is created.

This is the possibility I envisaged in my last story, Mountain Loop. In that story, Novikov’s principle initially seems to apply—but then, to obtain a satisfactory ending, I decided to ditch it completely.

It’s brilliantly explored in the 2009 British horror film, Triangle, which also makes excellent and horrifying use of the matter duplication aspect of time travel.

In contrast, the equally-brilliant Spanish film Timecrimes from 2007 seems to envisage a form of time travel in which Novikov’s principle perhaps does apply.

Physicists have long struggled to explain the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics, which were originally devised to explain atomic spectra, but which seem as though they should apply to ordinary life at the macroscopic scale, and yet—as illustrated by the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment—seemingly don’t.

It’s a funny thing about interpretations of quantum mechanics that, while none of them are provably correct, people tend to gravitate strongly to one or the other of them.

One popular interpretation is the many worlds hypothesis, which takes various forms, none of them fully worked-out.

This hypothesises that every time a quantum observation is made, whether under conscious supervision or not, the universe branches into two or more copies. Everything that can happen, does happen, according to this theory. It’s only a question of what happens in which universe.

If this is actually true, then clearly a universe (or class of universes) could exist in which George invents a time machine, but never encounters his past self. Right up until George actually gets into the time machine, perhaps only this universe exists.

When George travels through time and becomes George 2, another universe then comes into being in which George 2 meets George 1.

The two universes simply have different pasts.

If we accept that time travel is possible—which of course, for the moment, it isn’t, as far as we know—then it seems as though we either have to commit to the idea that somehow George is always going to get into his time machine, or else we are faced with multiple different pasts somehow existing.

The grandfather paradox is resolved either by removing free will somewhat from the picture, so that you simply can’t kill your own grandfather, or else by multiple universes allowing you to travel from one universe, where your grandfather has descendants, to another universe where you can kill your grandather, who then has no descendants in that universe.

You could try to argue that the universe where you kill your grandfather and the one where you don’t are the same universe, with different pasts.

But consider the universe where you do kill your grandfather. How, in this universe, did you go on to create the time machine? You can’t, because you are never born. Instead, you appeared at a certain point in time and, for unknown reasons, killed a man.

Yet you still remember the universe in which you were actually born. Perhaps you can still go back to that universe, but only by building another time machine and this time using it to prevent yourself from killing your grandfather. Bearing in mind the butterfly effect, this seems unlike to precisely restore the universe you fondly remember, but it might restore something very close to it, if you take care to prevent the killing with a minimum of fuss.

Whether we should say that these different pasts belong to the same universe or different parallel universes is perhaps a little bit unclear. Perhaps they were once the same universe, then they diverged when you went back in time and killed your grandfather.

Were two separate copies of everyone and everything brought into being at that point?

This is exactly the kind of thing that the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics envisages, and it definitely seems extravagant and, for most of us, a little unbelievable.

There’s one final paradox that I’d like to mention.

This is sometimes called the Fermi Paradox, since the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi once asked, “Where is everybody?”

He was referring to aliens but he could as well have been referring to time travellers. If, in the future, time travel to the past is invented, then where are all the time travellers now?

If what we might call the “many worlds” theory of time travel is correct, then the answer is that they are in a parallel universe.

Stephen Hawking once joked that he had held a party for time travellers, where he sent out the invitations after the party instead of before, but no-one showed up. His point being that it doesn’t seem as though there are any time travellers from the future around us.

No-one, as far as is known, has a credible plan for building a time machine, nor anything close to one. The closest physicists seem to have got is that apparently the theory of general relativity permits wormholes to exist in which spacetime loops back on itself—but the creation of such a wormhole would require far more energy than any human being is ever likely to control and the wormhole would likely crush anything that enters it, so that doesn’t seem very useful, nor practicable.

The best argument I can come up with in favour of backwards time travel is simply to vaguely assert that surely “everything is possible if only we knew how”.

That’s not a hill I want to die on.

But it is interesting to speculate about.

“Not good.” he said to himself. “Not good at all.”

Inside the hut, despite the primitive living conditions, he felt surprisingly content. The problem was, he had to make up time. He was already behind.

He made himself a coffee on the little camping stove and drank it slowly, warming his hands, wrapped in a blanket, watching the storm outside.

In his stomach, a knife twisted gently. What was it? Nostalgia? Memories of friends and lovers long receded into the night? Never mind; he could not afford to fall into melancholy.

Gradually, the blizzard diminished. Around noon he ate some bread and said to himself, “It’s time.”

He put on his boots and his backpack and made his way outside into the forest.

The trail led gradually upwards, sun filtering between dark tree branches. He felt a marvellous lightness of mood and limb. Now that he had finally dared to emerge from the hut, the trail seemed easier and the weather better than he had anticipated.

He hadn’t been walking more than a few minutes when he came upon an old man, lying at the side of the trail, apparently in pain.

Something about the appearance of the old man unsettled him, and for a moment he was irrationally afraid, and hung back. Then he thought to himself, “Don’t be stupid; the man needs help.” and he rushed forwards to offer assistance.

“It’s nothing.” said the old man, gasping in pain and shivering in the cold. “I dislocated my knee cap. I’ve done it before. It’s already gone back into place of its own accord. I just need a stick to walk with, then I can get back to the hut.”

“You can lean on me.” said Viktor. “I could even carry you.”

The old man smiled in spite of his pain.

“No, I will go there alone. Otherwise, if it happens again, I won’t have faith in my own strength. I just need you to find me a stick. A long stout stick that I can put my weight on.”

Viktor began to look around and soon found an ash sapling. He broke it off at the base. “Sorry, my little tree friend.” he said. “But you can still be planted again.”

He took the stick to the old man.

“It’s perfect.” he said. “You can go now.”

“I can’t leave you here!” said Viktor.

“I’d really rather you did. Five minutes and I’ll hoist myself up and I’ll soon be at the hut. I’m not quite ready to move just yet.”

“I’ll wait with you.”

“I’m perfectly fine without you. Thank you for the stick. Be off with you!”

These last words were uttered with some asperity. Viktor shrugged and turned to continue on his way.

“Unnecessarily irritable.” he said to himself.

“Wait!” said the old man, suddenly.

Viktor turned back to him.

“I know where you’re going. This path only leads to one place. I’ve trodden it myself. I have to tell you something. I have some advice for you.”

“What?”

“You won’t make it. Not to the summit. The path is far harder than you think it is. Your whole journey will be a disaster, believe me. Many times you will despair, but you’ll keep going anyway, always thinking of the peak. Take what you can from the journey, my friend.”

Then the strange old man lapsed into wheezing laughter.

“I really don’t think it’s going to be that hard.” said Viktor.

“Of course you don’t.” said the old man. “At least break off another of these little trees and use that for a stick. You’ll need it.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” said Viktor, “but thanks for the advice anyway, old man.”

“Take the main route, straight ahead!” the old man shouted after him. “It’s the only way you’ll stand any chance at all!”

Irritated, Viktor once again turned back to the trail, and soon left the old man behind.

He found his mood had darkened a little. The encounter with the strange old man had taken the edge off his exuberance. There was something else too: some mostly-forgotten memory that he preferred not think about. Something bad had happened. Better not to remember, he thought, and he forced himself to focus instead on the trail and the trees.

After three hours of moderate effort he arrived at a signpost. All of the signs were illegible, destroyed by endless years of ice and rain, but he wasn’t perturbed. He had expected this. He sat down to eat some nuts and bread.

The path that led straight ahead was the one the old man had recommended. It led to the peak, slowly but surely ascending via endless twists and turns. The path to the left was far shorter, but riskier and more exhausting. The path to the right was considered nearly impassable by many, but more varied and informative, and offered the greatest views.

After a short break, he strode off along the right-hand path.

The path soon became extremely rocky. Narrow slippery trails skirted vast precipitous cliffs.

By nightfall he was exhausted. He made camp in a patch of forest clinging to the hillside, building a primitive shelter from tree branches and ferns.

He awoke sometime in the early hours of the morning, a stone digging into his back under the fern fronds. Even inside the sleeping bag he was cold, but nothing he wasn’t used to.

Out of curiosity, he crawled out of the shelter to look at the night sky.

The sky was a rich tapestry of stars, a brilliant quarter-moon forming the centrepiece, the Milky Way a vivid translucent white stripe to the east.

In the darkness, the trees and mountains were nothing but silhouettes.

He jumped suddenly, startled. Someone had called his name.

Of course it couldn’t be. There was no-one else out here, and certainly no-one who knew him.

As he listened, straining his ears, he though he heard the voice again, fainter this time.

He shook himself. Of course it was nothing but the hallucination of a tired brain; an after-image cast by a dream, perhaps.

In spite of this rationalisation, the experience left him nervous, and wishing for light. He stood for a while, clapping his arms around his body for warmth, trying to shake the feeling off.

Among the blackness of the trees he thought he saw the twinkle of a faint light. It could only be one thing: the eye of some animal, reflecting the light of the moon. He could see it only by looking slightly to one side of it, allowing light to fall on the sensitive edges of his retinas.

His heart began to pound. He had heard terrible stories of the animals in these parts, and worse stories of people who had fallen prey to them. But still, most people traversed the path unscathed. The risk was acceptable and unavoidable.

He remained absolutely still, watching the dark trees, seeing nothing. Eventually he returned to his sleeping bag and his primitive shelter, where he lay awake for some time, his eyes searching for light in the near-complete darkness, before falling into a restless sleep.

The next day he awoke in the grip of a terrible sensation. Something very, very bad had happened. He quickly got out of the shelter and into the open air and shook the feeling off determinedly. Nothing bad had happened. Nothing. The feeling was surely only some awful amalgam of half-forgotten bad memories from his youth.

Then the memory of the eye in the forest came to him, and he gazed into the trees, so innocent in the grey sunlight of the morning, and laughed.

“I’m winding myself up into a state of absurd paranoia.” he said out loud to himself.

He made a little fire, edged with stones. He had bacon in his backpack. First he made coffee, then after rinsing the pan a little, he fried bacon in it, and ate it with bread. After that, even though he was shivering and the fire wasn’t big enough to properly warm him, his optimism returned.

He resumed walking with renewed vigour.

Around noon, having walked many hours without a break, a certain nervousness once again began to grow upon him.

The memory of the single eye among the trees—if it was an eye—preyed upon his mind. He recalled stories of forest animals stalking unwary hikers over many days, eventually leaping on them and consuming them whenever they appeared the most vulnerable.

A man could be sleeping or eating or emptying his bowels when suddenly his world would change into one of pain and terror. These animals rarely killed instantly; they were known to torment their food, sometimes over a period of days.

He glanced repeatedly over his shoulder, searching for signs that he was being pursued, but saw nothing, and heard nothing.

The sky had darkened again and the landscape had a grey, cold tone to it.

He decided to stop and at least have a snack, on the grounds that his blood sugar was probably low.

It was while sitting on a mound chewing a piece of bread that he heard an unusual sound, some way off. A rhythmic snapping of branches quite suggestive of footsteps. He froze. The sound ceased.

He had the eerie sense that something was watching him, searching for weakness.

He hurriedly packed his things and departed at a brisk pace. As far as he was able to tell, the sounds did not resume. He heard only typical woodland sounds: the rustling of leaves, the sound of the wind among the pine needles, and the occasional falling of dead branches weighed down by ice.

Even so, after an hour he was still in a heightened state of vigilance, strung taut like the high string on a violin, as he emerged onto a small rocky plateau. When he again heard a sound incredibly reminiscent of a woman calling his name, he almost jumped out of his skin.

Again he stopped and scanned the dark trees behind him.

Viktor reasoned that there were two possibilities. The first and most likely was that some damned bird or animal had a call that happened to sound vaguely like a woman’s voice, and his overwrought imagination had turned it into his actual name. The second, rather unlikely possibility, was that some sort of corvid had learned the name “Viktor” somewhere and now took a capricious delight in alarming hikers with it.

That there were no other human hikers on the trail, he was sure. At certain points, sections of the trail he had already traversed were visible further down the mountainside, and he had seen no other human being since he had left the old man behind, nor any trace of any.

Behind all of his nervousness, and perhaps responsible for it, was the nagging feeling that something awful had happened, something he didn’t want to remember. He refused to search his memory. Of course awful things had happened; awful things always happen, but to pollute his mind with them at such a time simply wouldn’t do.

He spoke out loud in an attempt to reassure himself with the sound of his own voice.

“Hitler and Stalin could condemn millions to death and not lose a night’s sleep over it, yet here am I, worrying about unpaid tax bills or stupid things I’ve said after too many beers.”

He turned back to the path and resumed a brisk pace.

“Still, it wouldn’t do to be Hitler or Stalin.” he said to himself.

Via a combination of talking and whistling he had almost managed to largely calm his jangly nerves when he heard the sound yet again: a woman softly calling his name.

He began to whistle loudly, as loudly as possible, his face almost crumpling with fear.

Perhaps it was schizophrenia. His cousin had developed it. Paranoia, hallucinatory voices; delusions, even.

He’d been fine before he started this accursed hike, hadn’t he? He almost began to think of the life he’d been leading just a week or two earlier, but he was brought up short by the beginnings of an ominous recollection that he really didn’t want to face. After all, there must have been a reason he’d started out on this journey. Had he not sought to put all mundane worries behind himself? To live a life more rooted in nature and the day-to-day necessities of a simplified existence?

The hallucinations, if that’s what they were, would cease once he got back to ordinary life. No; they would cease even before that, when he stood upon the peak, and the hardest part was behind him.

A hike like this, he told himself, is a kind of test of character. Can I be alone with my thoughts, with the forest and the mountains, or am I reliant on endless pointless chatter to maintain equilibrium?

As he walked, the path began to narrow, with a steep drop to one side. His paced slowed out of necessity.

Paradoxically, he began to feel calmer. Surely no one-eyed forest creature could follow him here.

By the end of the day he was exhausted beyond measure. The trail, such as it was, required constant vigilance to avoid losing footing, and continual clambering over icy rocks and around fallen trees.

In the distance he could see the peak, blue-grey and wreathed in mist. Few had taken the time to go there. Many had returned broken men, dying young, but Viktor was certain that only represented a failure of personality, or a lack of proper social adjustment. He would not make their mistake.

At least, having come this far, he had to believe in his mission.

That night he slept badly. In the early hours of the morning, when the sky was beginning to lighten in the east but still no trace of the sun could yet be seen over the horizon, he awoke suddenly, shivering.

Again someone had called his name, but perhaps the voice was only a dream. He listened, suppressing his breathing, lying absolutely still. He could hear odd noises, like footsteps around his shelter. He peaked out through the branches and fern fronds, and saw nothing. There was no-one out there.

He lay back again, and again heard the voice, this time imbued with a tone of pity and despair.

It was faint, but it seemed absolutely real.

It had to be a hallucination. Perhaps it wasn’t schizophrenia; perhaps it was only brought about by exhaustion or lack of some vitamin. He could ignore hallucinatory voices if that was the price of success.

He breathed with deliberate slowness, his heart pounding unpleasantly.

It would be light soon. He would get up and make a fire; chase away the spirits.

“What if the demon-believers are right?” he thought to himself. “What if this world really is roamed by disembodied spirits?” Goosebumps formed on his arms and the hairs on his neck stood up. What a thought.

He could still hear other odd sounds from outside. Pacing, and sounds reminiscent of muttering. Perhaps there was some animal out there. Maybe the thing from the forest had tracked him here after all. If it attacked it would surely come at him from the direction of his feet, at the flimsy entrance of the shelter. He might not know anything until it sank its teeth into his feet and began to drag him out, screaming in pain.

He tried to feel for his knife in the dark. He used the large sheath-knife for everything: cutting wood and food; eating, even.

Then he felt a sensation that half scared him out of his wits. Something clutched at his hand, like the grasp of a human hand, except there were no people out here.

He drew his hand back in terror and rushed out of the shelter, pushing the entrance cover made of leaves and tree branches carelessly out of the way. He could see nothing moving in the twilight darkness round him.

He swore and hurriedly put his boots on, then proceeded to make a fire as best he could in the darkness.

By the time the sun rose, he had eaten and drunk hot coffee, and was feeling somewhat calmer, but hardly calm.

He was losing his mind. It was the only possible explanation. But still he felt that he could think more or less clearly. His thought were not running, bubbling or tripping over themselves. They were ordered, regimented, for the most part.

He could see no sign of animals in the surrounding trees, and nothing visibly lurked among the rocky outcrops.

He swore out loud again. The journey was supposed to be challenging, but enjoyable. There was nothing enjoyable about this. He was passing his days somewhere between anxiety and terror.

All the while, at the back of his mind, was the memory of something awful. At least, he told himself, worrying about animals and insanity was better than confronting whatever that was. Fragments of an awful recollection made their way unbidden into his mind nonetheless. A car. A rainstorm. A woman with long brown hair. A dark miserable road. And …

He stopped himself before anything worse emerged, and forced himself to focus on the glowing embers of the fire. Occasional flames still flickered out of them. This was his reality now. This was all that he had to worry about. Walking, eating, staying warm.

What had he done? Surely nothing terrible. He wasn’t a bad person. There was no need to think about it.

He breathed in shakily and slowly, and then forced himself to inhale deeply twice more.

Then he packed up his things and stamped the fire out.

Today he would come close to his goal. Then tomorrow he would stand on the peak. After that, everything would be easy. He would take only the easiest routes, at the most sedate of paces.

As he resumed his journey, the aches and pains acquired during the previous day quickly reasserted themselves. The pain made him sloppy; he wanted only to move forwards and he was less careful about his footing.

The accident occurred shortly before he planned to stop for lunch. He slipped and plummeted down a steep scree, a small avalanche of sharp stones cascading down after him.

Near the bottom his foot caught a rock, twisting his leg and spinning him, and he landed painfully on his shoulder. Another metre and he would have landed on his head.

He grimaced and groaned in pain, and forced himself to feel his leg and shoulder for injuries. As far as he could tell, no serious damage had been done. Apart from a few small cuts he wasn’t bleeding, and nothing seemed to have been twisted out of position.

Only when he tried to stand did he discover that something had gone wrong in his leg. At first he thought he wouldn’t be able to walk, but after limping back and forth for a while, he decided that the pain was bearable. With a stick, he’d be fine. Likely it would get better with walking, as long as he took it easy.

Had the fall been his fault? Had he done something wrong? He couldn’t decide. His technique could have been better, but he was exhausted and his muscles aching.

He scrambled painfully back up the scree, then retraced his steps a short distance to an area where the ground was almost level and trees were sprouting hopefully upwards out of the thin soil. He hacked through a sapling to use as a stick.

Remembering the old man’s advice to take a stick, he said out loud, “Perhaps you were right, old man.”

Then he made a small fire.

He sat eating and warming his hands on the fire for two hours, before putting it out and hobbling along on his way. It would take longer to reach the peak now. He wouldn’t reach it tomorrow, but he would still get there. He had to.

On the plateau at the top, the trail forked into two directions, and one of these would take him home, and with much less effort than he had expended in getting there. How stupid he had been not to take the easy route, as the old man had recommended. But no, soon all the pain would be behind him, and he would enjoy the pleasure of remembering the struggle and the spectacular views; a pleasure that would have been denied to him on the easy route. The easy route held no glory.

As he walked, the pain worsened. His ankle and knee began to swell up. Clambering over rocks became a torture.

At the same time he became convinced that something was watching him, stalking him. Some kind of animal. At times he though he heard its footsteps behind him. Sometimes he even thought he could smell it.

He considered turning around, but the way back was now longer and harder than the way forwards.

“I can make it.” he told himself. “Even if it takes longer, I can make it.”

After making his way with agonising slowness along a rocky icebound ledge above a startling drop, he sat down on the cold ground and hung his head in pain and despair. There was no pleasure in this. Not anymore. He was forced to admit to himself that the journey was no longer about the challenge of making it to the peak; it was about survival.

He considered making camp and waiting for a few days until his leg perhaps improved. The problem was, he didn’t have enough food. He would have to pass several days without anything to eat, or else eat half-rations. Without proper nutrition, would his leg even heal?

In the end he rejected the idea as unworkable. He would have to grit his teeth and endure the pain.

If only he had thought to bring painkillers. Not once, in all his elaborate preparations, had the idea even crossed his mind.

Viktor pulled himself painfully to a standing position, leaning heavily on his stick. He decided to cut another stick. Perhaps with two sticks he could take some of the weight off his injured leg.

The creature seemed to come out of nowhere. It sprang at him, snarling. For a fraction of a second he saw only teeth, eyes and claws. He lashed out at it with the top end of the stick. It prepared to pounce, emitting an impossibly low, ominous growl. He swung the stick at it. It jumped back and ran off into the trees.

He began to hobble off down the path as quickly as he could manage, keeping his gaze turned backwards as much as possible.

After some minutes he realised his face was wet. He dabbed at his cheek with his hand. His hand came away covered in blood and tears. A sob emerged from his lips. This wouldn’t do. He stopped and shifted his knife from his right side to his left, so that he could grasp the knife with his free hand. Then he pulled himself up to his full height and, resting his left hand on the sheathed knife, he shouted at the tree line, “Next time I’ll kill you!”

His voice came out weak and uncertain, not strong and defiant as he had expected.

“I’m deteriorating.” he muttered to himself, as he resumed his slow limping hike.

He looked for another sapling to use as a stick, or a long low straight branch, but he found nothing that would adequately serve his purpose.

For mile after mile he progressed towards the peak, gradually ascending, every minute seeming like an hour. He focused on just putting one foot in front of another, using the stick to keep as much weight off his damaged leg as possible.

The end of his endeavour came quite suddenly. He lost his footing on an icebound slope and slid fifty metres downwards. At a certain point he lost consciousness as a rock hit his head. When he awoke, he was bitterly cold, his head and legs were on fire with pain, and his vision blurred.

He shifted his head fractionally and saw blood-spattered snow on the slope above him. Then he looked down, and saw that his leg—his good leg—was broken. There could be no doubt. The lower part projected outward at an impossible angle to the upper part.

He lay back and closed his eyes. If he could crawl to the nearest trees, perhaps he could make a fire, or a shelter. But the will wasn’t in him anymore. It was easier to close his eyes, to sleep.

He was jolted back to consciousness by the voice again. It called his name, this time quite clearly.

“What’s that?” he said, looking around. “Who’s there?”

Then he heard it a second time.

There was no-one there.

Probably hallucinations are normal when you’re dying, he thought. He was dying. He was too exhausted, too cold, and had lost too much blood. His leg was soaked with it.

A new fear flickered in his mind. He had done something bad; something very wrong. It was time to remember. No harm could come of it now. It had to be faced.

He closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye he saw a road. It was dark. He was driving in pouring rain. Incredible rain. There were no street lights and no cat’s eyes. Every slight turn the road made, he had to guess where the edge of the road lay.

He turned his head slightly. Sat by his side, in the passenger seat, was his wife, Rebecca. She was smiling, but nervous.

He said something to her.

“Hey, keep your eyes on the road.” she said to him in reply.

Suddenly there was nothing but the sound of squealing brakes and metal hitting metal. The world turned upside down. Very briefly, white chevrons indicating a sharp turn flashed past his field of vision, then there was another enormous crash of metal and glass and that was that.

Now he knew what he had done. He had killed Rebecca. He had killed his wife. That was why he had gone away; to forget.

One brief moment of inattention on his part and her fate had been sealed. They shouldn’t have been driving in those conditions. They should have stopped at a hotel. Everything could be different.

He began to cry. Now there was nothing left; no pride, no desire, only pain and the prospect of death.

The voice called his name again. He knew who it was now. It was her. Or rather, her spirit. Better yet, a hallucination: that was the truth of it. Dead people don’t have voices.

He felt a human hand clasp his. He wasn’t scared anymore. He knew it was her hand. He smiled.

A white light seemed to grow from a point until it took over his entire field of vision, almost blinding. The pain seemed to recede into the far distance. He felt that he was floating, flying.

In the middle of the whiteness, faint distant shapes seemed to emerge. As he approached them, they grew more distinct. He recognised one of the shapes; it was Rebecca, waiting to welcome him into the afterlife. But there was another also, whom he didn’t recognise.

Was it … God?

She uttered his name again, as if pleading or imploring.

He tried to say, “I’m coming to you, my love.” but he was only able to make a faint groaning sound.

Then, suddenly, he was there. There was Rebecca smiling down at him, while God looked down on him with an expression of concern. God took out a pen light and flashed it into one eye after the other.

It wasn’t God. Not unless God dressed like a doctor.

He squeezed her hand.

“He’s awake!” she almost shouted. “Viktor, you’re awake!”

He smiled slowly, to the fullest extent that he was able to manage, and said, in slurred, slow words, “You’re not dead.”

“You’ve been in a coma for two weeks, Viktor.” said the doctor, with a faint serious-looking smile. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“I was on a mountain.” said Viktor, a tear rolling from his eye.

“No, Viktor.” said the doctor. “You were in a car accident.”

Viktor’s eyes fixed on Rebecca, filling with tears.

He laughed.

The drive from Brent Cross would take over three hours, and on occasion might easily take six due to endless traffic jams. But today, Steve was feeling lucky. It was New Year’s Day, and traffic levels would be minimal.

After drinking the coffee, he got into his car, taking only a small suitcase, and drove onto the North London Circular. He passed by numerous grey metal buildings and under grey metal bridges, following the sign for the M1 North, navigating a couple of confusing roundabouts, before finally emerging onto the six-lane motorway that splits central England in half.

Once over the stress of navigating the roundabouts and junctions, he switched on the radio. A series of inane DJs introduced a series of awful songs. He tapped the touch screen and selected a playlist of Chopin’s piano pieces. Then he sighed deeply and somewhat contentedly.

The sky was lightening in preparation for sunrise on his right-hand side, the road was almost completely empty and there was no sign of rain. He was already looking forward to stopping, perhaps already in the Welcome Break place less than ten minutes away, and buying something for breakfast, and another coffee.

He had almost arrived at the service station when something rather curious occurred. The music abruptly stopped. It didn’t simply cut out; rather, it stopped with the sound of a record scratch.

Steve jabbed at the screen and nothing happened. It was completely frozen. Then he realised, to his horror, that the steering wheel wasn’t responding to his commands. With the screen frozen, there was no way to turn off the self-driving features. He discovered that neither the brake nor the accelerator worked, either. In fact, absolutely nothing worked. And yet, the car was still proceeding forwards at slightly under the seventy-miles-per-hour speed limit.

“What the devil is going on?” he said out loud.

A strange, distorted voice answered his question.

“Steven Crick.” it said. “We have taken control of your vehicle. You will obey our commands. If you do not obey, you will shortly die in a horrific accident.”

“Who is this?”

“Our name is Omega. We have control of every aspect of your vehicle. Watch.”

The car suddenly swerved right across three lanes, only the safety belt holding Steven in place, then swerved left one lane, settling into the middle lane.

Steve sat back in the driver’s seat, shocked, holding the now-useless steering wheel, the colour draining from his face.

“What do you want from me?”

“You own a Bitcoin account containing eight bitcoins. You will tell us the password to this account. After we have transferred the money to our own account, control of the car will be returned to you.”

“What do you think you’re doing? You’ll never get away with this!”

The voice laughed.

“Leave that to us, Steven.” it said.

“I-I don’t have the password with me. It’s at my house.”

“Oh, but you do, Steven. A cautious man like you. You’ve memorised a twenty-four word seed phrase which will enable us to access your wallet.”

Steve began to take his mobile phone out of his pocket.

“I don’t remember it. I’ve written it down somewhere.”

“As you wish, Steven. In one hour, your car will speed up to around one hundred and sixty miles per hour. It will then dive off the road and into a patch of trees just outside Leicester. You have a 0.2% chance of survival. In the unlikely event that you do survive, you will live the rest of your life as a cripple. It’s your choice, Steven. The only way you can prevent this happening is by remembering your seed phrase. We will wait.”

“I don’t know it!” shouted Steven frantically.

The voice was silent.

Looking around the car, he remembered, or thought he remembered, that the microphone was located next to the courtesy light on the ceiling. He took off his safety belt and removed his sweater. Then he stuffed the sweater against the microphone. Then he dialled emergency services.

“Do you require police, ambulance or the fire service?” said the voice on the end of the line.

“Police! Police!” said Steve in a stage whisper.

“Connecting you, hold on.”

After a pause, another voice said, “Police emergency. Where is your emergency?”

“I’m stuck in a car on the M1, just north of Welcome Break near Junction One. I’ve just passed a sign that says ‘No hard shoulder for 14 miles’. I’m in an Aether Ecoboost 3000. It’s blue. Listen, someone’s hacked my car. They say they’re going to crash it in an hour if I don’t give them my Bitcoin wallet password.”

“I see. Give me a moment, please sir.”

“Please hurry.”

A minute later, another voice emerged from Steve’s phone.

“This is Detective Constable Jenner of the Special Vehicle Interception Squad, London. I understand your vehicle has been hacked?”

“They’re going to kill me in … less than an hour!”

“Don’t worry, sir, that’s not going to happen. We can arrange for your car to be safely stopped, but it will take perhaps twenty minutes. Meanwhile, and this is very important, I strongly recommend that you give them the password. These people could try to kill you at any moment. Money stolen from Bitcoin wallets can be recovered. Your safest option is to give them your password.”

“I don’t remember it!” said Steve frantically. “You’ve got to stop the car. Please!”

“We’re setting up a stop right now, sir. Try your best to remember the password. Leave the phone on so we can hear you.”

“I’ve muffled the microphone with my sweater but if I take it away and you say anything, they’ll hear you.”

“Not a problem, sir. We will speak only when you tell us it’s safe.”

“OK. I’m taking the sweater away now.”

He fell back in his seat. The arm with which he’d been holding the sweater in place was shaking uncontrollably. He was covered in sweat. He tapped the control pad to turn the heating down, then remembered the pad was unresponsive.

He had memorised the seed phrase by visualising a sequence of events. The problem was, he couldn’t complete the sequence.

He closed his eyes. He was standing by a river bank, holding a lantern. Then he saw a window in the distance. He realised the house with the window was next to a harbour. The harbour was drawn with a giant pencil. The pencil drew a garden around the house, and in the garden stood a mirror. In the mirror he saw not the garden but a forest.

River, lantern, window, harbour, pencil, garden, mirror, forest.

“What’s next, what’s next?” he muttered to himself.

“Having fun, Steven?” said the voice suddenly.

“I’ve got the first eight words.” said Steven.

“Good.” said the voice. “Continue.”

River, lantern, window, harbour, pencil, garden, mirror, forest … bridge.

In the forest was a bridge leading to another planet. On the planet was a candle, standing on a mountain. He reached out, screwed up the entire vista and put it in his pocket. Suddenly he was standing in a library. He reached into his pocket and took out a compass. The needle of the compass was a feather.

Bridge, planet, candle, mountain, pocket, library, compass, feather.

“Yes!” Steven exclaimed. He had sixteen words. He only needed the remaining eight.

He closed his eyes. In his imagination he followed the direction of the compass feather needle. He arrived at a huge clock, standing in a valley. Then he put on a helmet, afraid of rockfalls. But instead of rocks, a huge anchor swung towards him. Instead of jumping out of the way, he began to write in a notebook. Then the shadow of the anchor fell across him, and he couldn’t see what he was writing. A raindrop fell on his forehead.

Clock, valley, helmet, anchor, notebook, shadow, raindrop.

He needed one more word. But at this point, his mind was a blank.

“I’ve got 23 of the words.” he said out loud.

“Good.” said the voice. “What are they?”

He reeled off the words.

“And the final word?” said the voice.

“I’ll get it.” said Steven.

“Try, Steve. “You have forty-two minutes left.”

For fifteen long minutes he tried everything possible to remember the last word. He tried to put himself in a relaxed meditative state, but in view of the pressure he was under, it was impossible. He tried to visualise himself standing in the valley, with the rain falling on him, and the anchor obscuring his vision—but try as he might, nothing else came to his mind.

Where were the police?

He shoved the sweater against the microphone again.

“Are you still there?” he whispered into the phone. “It’s safe to speak.”

“We’re still here, Steven.” said Jenner.

“Where are you? Can you stop the car?”

“Steven, there’s been a problem. Two of our key vehicles are out of action. They’ve been sabotaged. Whoever is doing this to you, they are clearly ruthless and cunning people.”

“You must be able to do something.”

“We’ve located your car, Steven. It’s going too fast for our usual techniques. If we lay a spike strip, the speed you’re going at, you’re quite likely to flip. At your current speed, that would likely be fatal.”

“Can’t you do anything?”

“We thinking about trying to rescue you via helicopter, but it’s a high-risk strategy. Steven, have you been able to remember the codewords?”

“I can’t remember the last one!”

“Please try, Steven. We’ll do everything we can but at this point, remembering the codewords is your best chance of getting out of this safely.”

“Dear God!” said Steven, in a half-sob. “OK, I’m going quiet again.”

“Understood.”

He let the sweater fall and he sat in his seat, bleakly contemplating what it might be like to plough into some trees at a hundred-and-sixty miles-per-hour. Hopefully the end would be quick. He didn’t want to die.

He pressed the sweater back against the microphone.

“Listen, I’m going to make a call.” he hissed into his phone.

“OK, Steven.” said Jenner. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

He dialled another number without ending the first call, and soon a voice answered.

It was Sarah.

“Sarah—” he began, but she cut him off.

She was crying hysterically and barely coherent.

“Steve, they’ve killed my parents! They’ve killed them, Steve. They want you to give them the password. You have to give them the password! They’re going to kill me—oh God, they’re going to kill me!”

For some moments he was frozen, staring in shock at his phone. Then he said, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine. I’m fixing it. Hold on, Sarah. Everything will be OK.” and he ended the call.

“They’ve got my wife!” he whispered to Jenner. “You have to send someone there immediately!”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Steve. We’ll send someone right away. What’s her address?”

He gave Jenner the address, then let the sweater drop from the microphone.

“You’ve got my wife!” he shouted.

The car’s 3D surround-sound speaker system emitted a sinister laugh.

“Yes, Steve.” said the voice. “Perhaps we’ll crash you at only forty or fifty miles an hour, so that you might possibly still have the pleasure of living on after she’s been brutally murdered.”

The voice began to laugh again.

“She has nothing to do with this!” said Steve.

“Give us the seed phrase, Steve. We need all of it.”

“I can’t remember it!”

“Your choice.” said the voice. “You have twenty-three minutes left.”

After that, the voice made no reply in response to Steve’s pleas and protestations, except for a low, drawn-out laugh.

He’d written the seed phrase down. It was in the back of a small black notebook. But where was the notebook? He clutched his head, feverishly trying to remember.

He was fairly sure it was in the wardrobe in the bedroom, underneath a pile of t-shirts. But who could he ask to retrieve it? His wife was too far away. Everyone they knew was either away somewhere or just not close enough to their house. Steve and Sarah had no dealings with their next-door neighbours; they were extremely weird people.

The house on the other side was empty, undergoing refurbishment.

George. Perhaps George could help. George was an old man, retired, who enjoyed gardening. He occasionally worked on their garden in exchange for a very modest remuneration that they had positively forced upon him. He lived in the next street.

Steve quickly dialled George’s number. Fortunately, George answered almost immediately.

“Hello?” said George.

“George, it’s Steve. Listen —”

“Steve! To what do I owe the pleasure? I were just sayin’ to Irene, if the weather stays like this —”

“Listen to me!” shouted Steve, wildly.

“What on Earth’s got into yer?” said George, taken aback.

“George, I need you to do something for me.” said Steve, forcing himself to remain as calm as possible. “My life depends on it. Sarah’s life depends on it. I’m not joking. This is not a joke.”

“Steady on, lad. What’s ‘appenin?”

“I haven’t time to explain. I need you to break into my house and find a black notebook underneath the t-shirts in the wardrobe in the main bedroom. In the back of the notebook there’s a list of twenty-four words. I need the last word, George.”

“Steve, you’re breaking up. P’raps it’s me phone. ‘Ang on, lad. I’ll try to put it on speaker phone.”

Steve whimpered quietly.

“That’ll be better.” said George. “Steve? What were you saying? Sommat about a wardrobe?”

Steve repeated the whole thing.

“‘Ave you been drinking, Steve?” said George.

“No, I’ve not been drinking! For the love of God, listen to me George! I’m dead if you don’t do it!”

“I can’t go breaking into your house! Have you gone soft in the head? What will the neighbours think? They’ll call the police.”

“Never mind the neighbours!” said Steve, almost shouting in spite of himself. “Please, George, I’m begging you.”

“All right, all right.” said George. “Calm thissen down. Let me think for a moment.”

“Will you do it? I need it within the next, I don’t know, quarter of an hour, or that’s the end of me and Sarah, George. I swear to God, people are going to kill us if we don’t get that word.”

“By ‘eck.” said George. “All right, lad. I’ll do it. I’ll ring you back when I’ve sorted it out.”

The line clicked off.

“Are you happy?” shouted Steven. “He’s getting it. You’ll have your seed phrase!”

The voice laughed again.

“We’ll see.” it said. “I hope so, for the sake of you and your lovely wife.”

Steve spent the next ten minutes desperately looking around for some way of safely leaving the car, in case George couldn’t find the notebook. In that case he would have to hope the police could get to Sarah in time, and somehow save himself.

Occasionally a car sped past, well over the speed limit. He wondered whether he could flag one of them down, and perhaps jump from one car to the other. But his Ecoboost was covered in cameras. Omega would surely see what he was trying to do, and kill him all the more swiftly.

He groaned in despair. He was completely covered in sweat, and shaking like a leaf.

After ten minutes, George called back.

“I’m in your ‘ouse.” he said. “Right job I had, getting in ‘ere. I’ve opened the wardrobe but there’s no pile of t-shirts in here. Only a load of weird stuff. Whips, rubber clothes, bags of pills. Never seen ‘owt like it. I’m not one to judge, but —”

“George!” Steven shouted. “What number house did you break into?”

“Seventy-two.” said George.

“We live at seventy-one! You’ve broken into the neighbour’s house!”

“By ‘eck, it’s lucky they’re not at ‘ome then. They seem like a right rum bunch.”

“George, listen! I need —”

But the phone went dead. Steve looked it, his hand shaking. It was out of charge.

“Oh no!” he moaned. “No, no, no!”

He rummaged about in the glove compartment for a charging cable. There wasn’t one. Then he remembered. The charging cable was in his suitcase, and his suitcase was in the luggage compartment at the front. There was no way to get to it without leaving the car.

“Listen to me.” he said, firmly. “To get the code word I need my phone. The phone’s out of power. I need to charge it, but the charging cable is in the luggage compartment with my luggage. You have to stop the car and let me get it.”

The voice laughed.

“Nice try, Steve.” it said. “That’s not going to happen.”

“I can get you your code word if you let me use my phone! Don’t you understand! You’ve got Sarah, haven’t you? I’m not going to run!”

“The car’s not stopping, Steven. You give us the last word or you and Sarah will both die. It’s your choice. It’s as simple as that.”

He took the seatbelt off, moved his seat back, and began to pound at the windscreen with his feet. He had the wild idea that if he could climb out of the car, perhaps he could somehow open the luggage compartment. Or else, jump onto another passing car.

He soon gave up. It was impossible. Then he thought about climbing out of a side window. He looked around for something to break it with, but there was nothing.

“Hey!” he shouted. “I need to get to the luggage compartment. Open the window.”

The window slid down almost noiselessly.

“Open the bonnet! Keep the car steady!”

The voice laughed again.

He stuck his head out and watched the road passing below, the wind buffeting his head. He began to climb out of the window, head first, holding onto the windscreen wiper stalk as soon as he was able to grasp it.

He was only able to keep from being blown clean off the car by pressing himself against it.

Only when he was lying flat on the bonnet, holding onto the windscreen wipers for dear life, did he realise that what he was attempting, was impossible. Even if he could somehow shift his weight off the bonnet in order to open it, he would run out of time before he could charge the phone, much less organise George into retrieving his notebook.

He began to clamber back into the car, legs first. Soon he was sitting back in the driver’s seat, shivering while still covered in sweat.

The driver’s side window slid noiselessly up again.

“What a pity, Steve. Not brave enough.” said the voice. “Five minutes left. What’s it to be?”

“Let me think!” Steve shouted.

He racked his brains. His mind was a blank. Then he began to think of words beginning with each letter of the alphabet.

“Ark. No. Answer. No. Beetroot. Belt. Bear. No, no, no!”

When he got to G, he thought “garage” sounded almost plausible.

“Garage! I think it’s garage!” he said.

“Let’s see.” said the voice. Then a minute later, “No, that doesn’t give us access, Steve.”

Steve whimpered.

“Perhaps you need a little bit more motivation.” said the voice. “You need to properly understand that you are going to die in the next few minutes if you don’t give us what we want.”

The car began to weave erratically from side to side, throwing Steve half onto the passenger seat, then back again.

“I can get you the last word!” he shouted. “I need more time!”

Then, from behind him, came the sound of a police siren, and then another. He turned round to see two police cars following him.

The car accelerated rapidly, pulling away from them.

“They can’t save you, Steven.” said the voice. “They can only witness your horrific death.”

Then, suddenly, there was a loud bang, and the car began to slow.

“What the …?” said Steve.

The car swerved crazily all over the road, slowing dramatically, and Steve saw that soon he would hit the crash barrier that guarded the central reservation.

Just when he was bracing for impact, the car ground almost to a halt, and then merely grazed the barrier. The car continued grinding forwards for several metres, and then stopped.

Soon, he was surrounded by police.

He pressed the button to lower the window, and it worked.

A gruff-looking police constable approached him.

“In a hurry, are we, sir?” he said.

“N-no.” said Steve.

“Not wearing a safety belt, sir?”

Steve opened his mouth but nothing further came out.

“Do you know why I pulled you over, sir?”

Steve was in such an advanced state of fear and confusion that he could only croak, “No.”

“You were using your phone while driving, sir.” said the constable. “We spotted you half an hour ago. I’m going to ask you to breathe into this breathalyser. Have you been drinking?”

“No.” said Steve. “But, how did you stop me?”

“Stinger on the road. Didn’t you see it? The spikes let the air out of the tyres gradually. People usually slow down after that. You seem pretty determined to get somewhere though, if I may say so, sir.”

“Must be in a terrible hurry.” said a policewoman, dryly.

“Ground the paint clean off the side of your car.” said the policeman.

“My wife.” said Steve, his brain struggling towards coherence in spite of his confused mental state. “I called you about my wife. Is she OK?”

“I don’t think we’ve received any calls from you.” said the policeman. He looked at the police woman. “Have we?”

“No, Sergeant Wilcox. No calls that I know of.”

“You have to help her! They’re going to kill her! They’ve killed her parents!” said Steve.

“Is that why you were in such a hurry?” asked the policewoman.

They took Steve to a police station, promising to look into his wife’s situation, and all the while claiming to have no record of any previous conversation with Steve.

An hour later, Sergeant Wilcox and Police Constable Whitstable sat down with him in an interview room.

“We sent a pair of officers to the address you gave us.” said Wilcox. “Your wife’s fine. Her parents are fine. Now, perhaps you’d like to explain to us why you were driving like a lunatic?”

“Fake.” said Steve, in an awed half-whisper.

“What?” said Wilcox.

“It was all fake. The police, my wife … nothing but artificial intelligence.”

“I see, sir.” said Wilcox gravely, rolling his eyes at Whitstable.

It took three days for Steve to fully explain everything to the police, and for the police to verify his claims. They dropped the charges against him, which largely revolved around reckless driving.

Steve was allowed to return home.

“No-one even knows I have a Bitcoin account apart from you!” he said to Sarah, while they sat at the kitchen table drinking tea.

An alarmed and rather guilty look appeared suddenly on her face.

“I told my brother about it.” she said. “We were discussing investments.”

“That feckless idiot!” Steve exclaimed.

“I didn’t tell him how much was in it.” Sarah protested.

But it was clear who the culprit was. Sarah’s brother was a rather unstable character with a series of convictions for petty crimes to his name, but in recent years had apparently begun to sort himself out, and had developed an interest in computers.

He was arrested two days later. A week after that, an accomplice was arrested: a hacker. An extremely good hacker, in fact.

In spite of London’s restrictive clean air laws, Steve now drives a 2017 diesel-fuelled Mercedes‑Benz.

There she saw a dreadful sight, something no-one should ever see, much less a child.

Her mother was lying at the foot of the stairs, her eyes open and vacant, her head twisted at a horrible angle.

It’s better if we skip over the subsequent few minutes. It may be imagined that Ella tried to rouse her mother, and she screamed and cried in terror, instinctively understanding that something was horribly wrong.

Eventually she remembered what her mother had told her, over and over again, and she went to the telephone and dialled 999 for the emergency services.

The woman on the end of the line could hardly understand what Ella was saying, but after a minute she seemed to get the idea. She told Ella to stay on the line, and that help would arrive very soon.

Of course, Ella’s mother was quite dead, having tripped over the cat and fallen all the way down the stairs.

The ambulance arrived surprisingly quickly, although to Ella, the wait seemed like forever.

A man and a woman appeared at the front door.

Unfortunately Ella wasn’t sure how to open the door, but somehow the man and the woman were able to open it from the outside.

“I’m Sam and this is Charlotte.” said the man.

“I think she’s died.” said Ella, sobbing, her face a mask of misery and tears.

“No she’s not dead.” said Charlotte, reassuringly. “She’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

They seemed to know exactly where Ella’s mother lay. They hurried there and the man laid a computer tablet by her side and began pressing buttons on the screen.

Ella’s mother’s neck straightened. Blood splashed on the stairs ran back into cuts on her forehead, and the cuts healed. She sat up.

“What happened?” she said. “Who are you?”

“Paramedics, ma’am.” said the man. “You fell down the stairs. No serious damage done.”

As they were driving away, Sam said, “We can’t keep doing this. They’re going to catch us sooner or later. It’s too dangerous.”

“Sam!” said Charlotte, outraged, “Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t intercepted that call! That little girl’s life would have been ruined, and her mother would be dead, for a start.”

“I know, I know.” said Sam, gripping the steering while tightly. “But look, tragedies happen all over the world, every day. We can’t fix the vast majority of them. We don’t hold ourselves responsible for them. We can’t. There are only two of us. And anyway, if we were miraculously able to go around fixing every single problem, people would just take more risks.”

“You’re such a cynic.” said Charlotte.

“At any rate, we can’t share it with the world.” said Sam. “It’s too powerful.”

“I’m not suggesting we share it with the world.”

They drove on in silence for a while.

Eventually Sam said, tentatively, “About that idea I had.”

“No.” said Charlotte.

“What, no?”

“It’s too weird. If you do that, I’m never touching you again.”

He glanced at her. Certainly she wasn’t completely serious, but she wasn’t entirely joking either.

“I’m not talking about becoming some kind of transhumanoid cyborg! It’s just an implant, which could be easily removed at any time. Everything would be safer with an implant.”

Charlotte shuddered.

“I’m not discussing it.” she said, and she turned to look out of the window.

“All right, then.” muttered Sam under his breath.

The following day they were sitting in the room they used as a laboratory when Orion intercepted another call. Sam was fiddling with some electrodes immersed in a pool of platinum solution, while Charlotte sat at a terminal chatting with Orion, attempting to teach it advanced moral philosophy.

Orion’s ruthless machine logic made it curiously susceptible to applying moral laws in a way that Charlotte found unsettling.

She swore out loud as Orion once again suggested murdering people in order to prevent a larger hypothetical catastrophe.

“You know what the problem is?” said Sam.

“What’s the problem, Sam?” said Charlotte dryly.

“We human beings don’t have an infinite library of solutions to an infinite set of moral dilemmas, waiting to be taken off the shelf. We figure things out as we go along. Lots of problems have no good solution.”

“You’re no help.” said Charlotte, sighing.

Then the alarm went off, and Orion briefly summarised the situation.

“Child, male, drowned in a swimming pool.” it said. “ETA, seven minutes.”

“Let’s go.” said Charlotte.

They slid down a pole at the side of the room, ran through the tunnel at the bottom and jumped into the fake ambulance.

They watched the dashboard screen anxiously, Sam drumming his fingers on the dashboard, as Orion monitored the traffic outside and carefully analysed the direction of gaze of everyone present near the road.

Finally a light on the dashboard turned green, a bleep sounded, and the ambulance shot upwards. A small crater opened up in the road and the ambulance popped out of it, then the crater resealed itself behind them.

Soon the sirens were blaring as they rounded corners at high speed, traffic pulling over for them, clearing space.

They soon arrived at an old house just outside the town.

“Didn’t this used to be a ruin?” said Charlotte as they ran to the door.

“Looks like someone’s refurbished it.” said Sam.

They pounded at the door, and a man let them in. He wore a thin stubbly beard with black-rimmed spectacles, and light brown hair swept back from his forehead, tied behind his head in a ponytail.

“It’s my son!” he said, frantically “Please hurry!”

The man showed them through a door and into a white unfurnished room. The room contained only two chairs completely covered with painting sheets. At the far side was another door. They yanked it open. Behind it was only a patch of unpainted brick.

They spun around confused. The man was pointing a pistol at them.

“You and I are going to have a little conversation.” he said.

“What is this?” said Sam.

Another two men appeared behind the first. One of them, grey-haired, wore the white coat of a doctor. The other was an enormous tall thickset man, resembling a nightclub bouncer.

“You can call me Zach.” said the man with the ponytail. He motioned to the thickset man and said, “Gaz!”, which was apparently the man’s name.

Gaz marched over to the chairs and removed the painting sheets to reveal two sturdy metal armchairs replete with straps and chains. They would not have been out of place in the execution chamber of an American prison. Gaz proceeded to push Sam and Chalotte into the chairs.

Sam immediately protested as Gaz tried to strap his wrists to the arm rests. Gaz punched him in the stomach while Zach levelled the pistol at him menacingly, and Gaz was able to complete his work.

He then strapped Charlotte into the other chair.

“Why are you doing this?” she said. “Who are you?”

“All will be revealed.” said Zach, and the doctor smiled grimly.

Gaz fetched a black bag, then the three men stood facing the helpless Sam and Charlotte.

“I used to work for the police.” said Zach, assuming the air of a professor giving a lecture to a room of students. “I was assigned to look into the case of a couple who pretended to be paramedics. According to local legend, this dynamic duo mysteriously appeared in an ambulance and effected remarkable cures.

“In the cause of investigating this phenomenon, I had your phone tapped and your house bugged.”

Sam and Charlotte exchanged frightened glances.

“You don’t look like police.” said Sam.

“That’s because I quit.” said Zach. “You see, I realised you had something of astonishing value. Something a mere police force couldn’t possibly understand. You have developed a technology that can individually manipulate atoms, under the control of a powerful computer.

“You can heal dead people. You can make ambulances appear from thin air. God only knows what else you can do.

“Such a technology cannot be entrusted to a pair of idiots like yourselves. No offence. Therefore, I’ve assembled a team of people”—he motioned to Gaz and the doctor—“to assist me in effecting a transfer of knowledge, from you to me.

“You will explain in detail how this technology works, and when we’ve finished, if I’m fully satisfied, I may allow you to live.”

“We’re not going to tell you anything!” said Sam.

“I thought you’d say that.” said Zach.

He nodded at Gaz, who produced a small hand axe from the bag and walked slowly towards Sam.

“We’ll start with your left hand.” said Zach.

“You’re wasting your time! I won’t tell you a thing!” said Sam, his voice shaking.

Gaz brought the axe down on Sam’s wrist, chopping clean through it, and Sam’s hand fell onto the floor.

Sam screamed in pain.

“Tut tut tut.” said Zach. “So unnecessary. Dr. Willthorpe, please keep the subject alive.”

The doctor rushed forwards and began strapping up Sam’s bleeding stump. He administered an injection, then he began to set up an IV drip.

“Will you tell me now,” said Zach, “or shall we proceed?”

“You sick, evil, psychopath.” shouted Sam, groggy from the pain. “You can kill me but you’ll never get what you want!”

“Proceed, please Gaz.” said Zach.

Gaz went over to Charlotte and poised the axe above her left wrist. She screamed and begged Zach not to do it.

“OK!” said Sam hurriedly. “I’ll tell you everything.”

“No, Sam!” said Charlotte. “You can’t!”

“Well?” said Zach.

“I’ll tell you everything.” repeated Sam. “I’ll explain how it works. I’ll need some paper. Don’t hurt her.”

“Take him to the kitchen.” said Zach.

“Sam, don’t!” said Charlotte. “It’s better if we die!”

“I’m sorry.” muttered Sam, as Gaz unstrapped him and dragged him out off the chair.

There was blood absolutely everywhere, although Dr. Willthorpe’s ministrations had reduced the flow a great deal.

“Get rid of the hand, Doctor.” said Zach. “It’s making me queasy.”

Dr. Willthorpe took Zach’s hand by the thumb. In the kitchen, he threw it carelessly into the bin.

Soon Sam was drawing diagrams with his one remaining hand, Willthorpe giving him injections for the pain and stimulants to keep him conscious and alert.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it in a day.” said Sam. “There’s too much to explain.”

“Dr. Willthorpe has an excellent understanding of physics.” said Zach.

Willthorpe smiled.

“We’ve discovered physical principles far outside of the mainstream.” said Sam. “I’ll have to explain all of it.”

“Take all the time you need.” said Zach. “We’ll take a break every hour. Would you like tea? Coffee?”

“What about Charlotte?”

“We’ll take care of her.” said Zach. “Tell us everything we need to know, and tomorrow perhaps you can both be on your way. You’ll get used to missing a hand.”

That night, all three men slept on cheap mattresses on the floor of an upstairs room, while Sam and Charlotte remained locked in the room downstairs, lying on the floor. The floor was still covered in Sam’s blood. Willthorpe had made cursory attempts to clean some of it up, but he had been greatly hindered by the lack of an functioning water supply to the house.

“Oh, Sam!” Charlotte exclaimed, “I’m so sorry. We have to get out of here, Sam. There must be a way we can get out of here.”

“I think it’s best we stay here.” said Sam. “I’m afraid.”

“You musn’t be afraid of them, Sam!” said Charlotte. “We have to think!”

“I’m not afraid of them.” said Sam. “I’m afraid of what it might do.”

“It? What do you mean?”

But Sam, exhausted from loss of blood and having spent hours feeding nonsense to the three men, fell into unconsciousness. Charlotte decided to let him sleep.

In the early hours of the morning, Gaz suddenly awakened, for reasons that he couldn’t fathom. He had heard something, he thought, or perhaps he had only dreamed he’d heard something.

He reached for his bedside lamp, then quietly cursed when he realised it wasn’t there. He was still at the house. Then he remembered all the money Zach had promised him, and he smiled and closed his eyes.

He opened his eyes again quiet suddenly. He had heard something. A scuttling sound, as if a small creature was loose in the room.

He activated the light on his phone and scanned the room. He could see nothing. Zach and Willthorpe were sleeping peacefully.

He turned it off and lay down again.

“Stinking rats.” he murmured to himself.

He had always had a pronounced phobia of rats, which he kept to himself, for fear of damage to his reputation as a ruthless thug.

Slowly his breathing deepened and he fell back into the first stages of a deep sleep.

The alarm on Zach’s phone went off at 7 o’clock the following morning. Zach opened his eyes and stretched. Willthorpe sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Wake up, Gaz!” said Zach. “We’ve got work to do.”

Gaz’s eyes opened, but he said nothing.

“Willthorpe, go and make some coffee.” said Zach.

“Yes, master.” said Willthorpe sarcastically.

“Screw you.” said Zach.

When Willthorpe returned with three mugs of black coffee on a tray, Zach was sitting up, reading something on his phone.

“I don’t know about you,” said Zach, taking a mug, “but I absolutely can’t function without my coffee in the morning.”

He took a sip.

“Tastes like sewage but it’ll do.” he said.

Then Gaz caught his eye again.

“What the hell is up with that lazy freak?” he said, irritably. “Wake him up.”

Willthorpe was looking curiously at Gaz, while drinking his coffee. He put the coffee down and slapped Gaz’s face.

“Wake up, bozo!” he said.

Gaz’s eyes opened again, but still he said nothing.

“What’s up with you?” said Willthorpe.

Gaz opened his mouth, as if about to say something, but instead emitted a drawn-out inhuman groan.

“I’m sick of this.” said Zach, suddenly snapping. He leapt out of bed and seized Gaz by the collar of his black sweater, yanking him to a sitting position with some difficulty. Gaz’s head lolled atonically to one side.

“Something’s seriously wrong.” said Willthorpe.

Zach let go of Gaz and Gaz fell back heavily onto the bed.

Willthorpe began to conduct an examination of Gaz.

“I think he’s had a stroke.” said Willthorpe, taking Gaz’s pulse. “His reflexes are virtually absent but his heart’s still strong.”

“What are saying?” said Zach. “He’s a vegetable now?”

“It must have been an extremely severe stroke.” said Willthorpe.

He let Gaz’s arm fall back on the bed and turned to face Zach.

“He’s not going to be any use to us now.”

“Is it permanent?” said Zach incredulously.

“Probably.” said Willthorpe. “With medical treatment he may improve somewhat, over a year or two, but probably not, to be perfectly honest. We need an MRI to properly determine how much damage there’s been to his brain.”

“Yeah, well that ain’t happening.” said Zach. “We’ll proceed without him. We don’t need him anyway. We’ve got guns. Finish your coffee and let’s get on with it.”

Willthorpe turned back to Gaz, frowning.

Then Willthorpe noticed something. He peered at the skin on Gaz’s neck.

“What?” said Zach.

“There are marks on his neck.” said Willthorpe. “Exactly at the carotid arteries.”

“So?”

“It’s as if …”

“What? Spit it out, man.”

Willthorpe shook his head in disbelief.

“It’s as if he’s been strangled. But not just strangled. Something has pressed exactly on the main arteries supplying his brain with blood. The blood flow was cut off, doubtless for some minutes. That would explain his condition.”

“No-one’s been in here.” said Zach, glancing at the half-open door. “I’m a light sleeper. I would have noticed, believe me.”

“I must be mistaken.” said Willthorpe, scratching his head. “There ought to be signs of a struggle. If a human being did this, he would have had to have incredible strength.”

“Never mind about it.” said Zach. “We need to go and finish the job. That nerd said he needs another eight hours. You understood everything he said so far?”

“I think so.” said Willthorpe. “I’ve made extensive notes. Of course I’ll have to go over them again.”

“Make sure you get everything you need. This evening I’m garotting him. And his idiot wife.”

Then went downstairs and dragged Sam back to the kitchen, Zach waving the pistol at him threateningly. Sam was ashen-grey.

“I’m in a lot of pain.” he said, as they sat him down at the table.

“Don’t worry about that.” said Willthorpe. “A little injection and you’ll be fine.”

“Where’s the other guy?” said Sam.

“What, do you miss him?” said Zach. “He’s busy. Mind your own business.”

Zach shoved some paper and a pen in front of Sam.

“Continue with the explanation.” he said.

For four hours, Sam continued to explain his theory to Dr. Willthorpe. Finally Willthorpe, rubbing his neck, said, “Let’s break for lunch.”

“Are you kidding me?” said Zach. “It’s not even noon.”

“It’s all right for you.” said Willthorpe. “I’ve got to understand all this stuff. Mental exertion is exertion just the same as physical exercise. Effectively, I’m running a marathon here.”

“Why am I cursed with morons?” said Zach, throwing his hands in the air. “Take a break. Make us a coffee. We’ll have lunch in a couple of hours.”

“Very well.” said Willthorpe stiffly, clearly disgruntled. “I need a bathroom. Be back in a minute.”

Zach sat down in the chair opposite Sam at the little kitchen table.

“You need to hurry it up.” he said.

“I’m going as fast as I can.” said Sam. “The pain …”

Zach took his pistol from a holster under his sweater and placed it in front of him on the table.

“The pain can be a lot worse.” he said. “We can still do a bit of pro-bono amputation on you pretty wife, if you need more motivation. Or I could shoot you in the knee. They say that’s extremely painful.”

“I’ll hurry it up.” said Sam.

“You do that.” said Zach.

Zach stood up and went to the kitchen counter, sticking his gun back into his belt. There, Dr. Willthorpe had set up a coffee machine next to a ten-gallon water tank, plugged into a rechargeable inverter.

“Might as well make my own coffee while we’re waiting for that idiot.” said Zach.

Willthorpe , emerging from the bathroom at the top of the stairs, having made use of the ancient toilet in there which they had no way of flushing since the water supply wasn’t connected, thought he heard the scampering of a rat or a mouse. He shivered and hurried to the stairs.

At the top, he tripped, his foot catching on a wire, and he plummeted head first down the uncarpeted staircase. His head landed briefly on a rotten piece of wood supporting an upturned nail, before he continued his descent to the bottom.

In the kitchen, Zach and Sam heard a shriek followed by the sound of Willthorpe crashing down the staircase.

“What the hell?” said Zach, and he waved the gun at Sam, forcing him to stand up so that they could go together to find out what had happened, Zach knowing full well that Sam would go to Charlotte and escape if he was left alone even for a moment.

When they came upon Willthorpe’s body, Willthorpe was in the middle of a series of epileptic seizures. As they watched the seizures gradually diminished, and Willthorpe gave one last gasp and died. The nail was still embedded in his skull.

“Get up those stairs.” said Zach. “Whoever did this is dead meat.”

Sam stepped carefully around Willthorpe, supporting himself with his remaining hand against the wall, cradling the stump at the end of his other arm against his chest.

At the top of the stairs they found nothing; the wire had already been removed. At Zach’s insistence they proceeded to search the upper floor with extreme thoroughness.

“It might have been an accident.” said Sam, as they stood together on the landing, Zach still pointing the gun at Sam.

“I should just shoot you now.” said Zach. “Because of all this I’m going to have to find another criminal science guy. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a properly criminal science guy?”

Then the hatch leading to the attic caught Zach’s eye.

“Up there.” he said. “That’s where he’s hiding. Whoever did this.”

“There’s no way to get up there.” said Sam.

Zach thought for a moment, then said, “Into the bedroom. Get the cord from that old lamp.”

Sam was on the verge of passing out. He was shaking and as pale as death, but he staggered into the bedroom. There, was a smashed-up old bedside lamp. Sam began to pull shakily at the cord.

“Never mind.” said Zach. “Lie down flat on your stomach.”

Sam complied, and Zach proceeded to yank out the lamp’s cable and tie Sam’s feet with it. Then he looked around for another cable, which which to tie Sam’s arms together. He found an old curtain cord and forced Sam’s elbows together behind his back. Sam screamed in pain and blood began to emerge again from the stump of his wrist, but Zach managed to complete the task.

Then he took hold of Sam’s feet and dragged him back to the landing, Sam groaning in agony.

“Wait here.” said Zach with a wink.

Zach stuck the gun in his belt then, reaching up towards the hatch that led to the attic, he jumped up, pushing the hatch slightly open with his knuckles. Then he jumped again and clung to the rim of the aperture. He began to pull himself up into the hole.

Sam, meanwhile, had wriggled onto his side so that he could see what was happening.

Zach had lifted his head into the attic when he suddenly screamed, then a moment later he dropped to the floor of the landing.

A half-emptied syringe, presumably taken from Dr. Willthorpe’s supplies, was sticking out of his eye.

Zach tried to rise to a sitting position, feeling for the syringe, but then he collapsed back onto the floor, where he remained, lifeless.

Sam breathed heavily, pleased that Zach was dead, but scared of whoever or whatever had killed him.

As he watched, fingers emerged from the aperture in the ceiling. Slowly, a human hand, Sam’s own, crawled spider-like onto the ceiling, somehow sticking there by its fingertips.

“Oh God!” Sam moaned.

The hand began to crawl down the wall. It hadn’t got very far when it lost its strange adhesion to the flaking paint and fell all the way to the floor. Then it began to crawl towards Sam.

“Please!” whimpered Sam.

When it reached his prostrate body, it paused and then crawled slowly over him and onto his back.

Sam breathed heavily and laboriously, terrified. Then he passed out.

When he awoke, his arms were free. He raised his left arm to inspect the stump, and stared uncomprehendingly at what he saw. The hand had reattached itself to his wrist perfectly, leaving not even a trace of a wound. In shock, he raised his other hand, wondering whether he had somehow, perhaps due to blood loss and infection, become confused about which hand had been chopped off. His other hand was also perfectly fine.

He began to unfasten the cord that held his ankles.

Ten minutes later, Sam unlocked the door to the room where they had left Charlotte.

The terrified expression on her face turned to amazement when she saw Sam standing there, then to shock when he raised his left hand and opened and closed it.

Sam was still pale and looked as though a slight breeze might easily knock him over, but he was managing to stay on his feet.

“You went ahead with it!” she said. “You had Orion implant nanotechnology into the bones of your hand!”

“I’m sorry.” he said. “I know you’re against it. I only did the one hand. I can always remove it again.”

“Remove your hand?” said Charlotte, confused and aghast.

“No, I mean, take the nanotech out again.”

“Where are the men?” she asked.

“Two of them are dead and the other’s upstairs, but he’s more or less vegetative.” he said. “Something’s gone wrong with his brain.”

Charlotte jumped up and ran to him, and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing.

“I love you, Sam.” she said.

I thought he just meant a long walk in the hills. I was surprised, because he didn’t seem the type to enjoy nature. Bars and seedy clubs were more his cup of tea.

The hike mutated into some kind of a thing where we had to stay overnight in tents, and then it was two nights, perhaps even three, and somehow I ended up agreeing to it all. Then, at the last minute, it turned out that his friend Stevo was coming along too.

I attempted to extricate myself from the whole business, but Jake said I’d be ruining the trip if I backed out at that point, and that he was relying on me to carry supplies.

In those days I used to feel like even a simple “no” was a kind of offence or insult, so I was easy prey; easily manipulated. The idea somehow hadn’t occurred to me that you don’t have to agree to everything, and that if people are going to be hurt or offended by a pleasant refusal then that’s their own lookout.

I had understood that the proposed hike would take place in Scotland, but soon even that had changed to Italy, a country I knew nothing about, and whose language I didn’t speak a word of. I finally flatly told Jake that I wasn’t going, that it was all too much and that I couldn’t afford the time off work. Then he said he’d already bought the tickets, and he laid on the guilt tactics with a spade.

In the end I resigned myself to it.

I met Stevo for the first time at the airport. His first words to me were, “Bloody hell, look at this total dweeb. How’s he going to carry anything? Looks like a stick on legs.”

I’ve even toned down his language quite a bit, since there’s no point writing down the various expletives with which he punctuated his speech. I nearly turned and walked off, but Jake said, “He’s only joking, mate. Can’t you take a joke?” and Stevo said, “Sorry mate, I’m just joshing you. Jake said you’ve got a great sense of humour.”

“Jake said that?” I asked him.

“Yeah, you said that, didn’t you, Jake?”

“Yeah, totally.” said Jake, in a way that was quite unconvincing.

“Stevo.” said Stevo, holding out his hand.

I made to shake it, then he pulled his hand away and made an obscene gesture and dissolved into laughter.

“I’m just teasing you mate, don’t be such a wimp.”

“We’re really happy you’re coming.” said Jake.

Stevo held out his hand again and I shook it.

“I know I’m a bit of a donkey, pay it no attention.” he said, and for a moment he almost seemed genuine.

“You’re a complete donkey all right.” said Jake.

“Yeah, I know.” said Stevo.

I’d never been out of England before; not even to Wales or Scotland. My expectations around planes were conditioned by old films where people sat in well-spaced comfortable chairs, being served glasses of champagne. So I wasn’t really ready for the realities of modern budget airlines, which seemed to involve almost more queuing than flying, and a rather degrading security process. Then I somehow ended up in the middle of three seats, sandwiched between Jake and Stevo, both of whom seemed to need an extraordinary amount of space, while I shrank into my seat as best I could.

The air in the cabin started rather cool but warmed as we approached our destination. When we began to descend, Jake, who was sitting by the window, pointed out some landmarks to me, including the long bridge that led to some place called Chioggia, then St. Mark’s Square, and the Grand Canal.

By then I was feeling a bit sick, so I wasn’t all that interested, and wished he’d just shut up. The smell of the food he and Stevo had ordered, combined with the movement of the plane, had distinctly unsettled my stomach.

Then of course there was a whole process of disembarking. When I finally saw a bathroom I ran to it. I was perplexed to discover not a conventional toilet as I understood it, but rather, a flat area on the floor with striated spots for the feet and a kind of drain in the centre. At that point I had no choice but to hurl the contents of my stomach into it. Fortunately it had a button for flushing it.

When I rejoined the passport queue I was a bit shaky, but felt a lot better.

“Did you just puke?” said Jake. I nodded and he said, laughing, “You idiot!”

Stevo laughed too. I couldn’t really see what was funny about it, but I tried to laugh, just to fit in.

At Venice we hired a car. Jake drove. Somehow they didn’t have quite enough cash and couldn’t use their credit cards for reasons I didn’t understand, so I ended up having to pay the whole thing. I sat in the back, listening to them laughing about stuff and people they knew, who I’d never heard of.

What a disaster! I bitterly regretted agreeing to any of it.

Stevo said we ought to take in what he called a “Gentleman’s Club” in Milan, where he said illegal drugs could be purchased at a decent price, but at that point I was in desperate need of peace and quiet, and I told them I absolutely wasn’t interested, and if they wanted to go there I’d happily wait in a hotel somewhere, and in the end, they shelved the idea.

After about two hours we began to wind our way upwards along roads with hairpin bends, my ears popping with the altitude. Finally I began to feel a little more like myself, and I was able to take an interest in the surroundings.

We were driving in among mountains the like of which I’d only seen in films. Tall, sometimes jagged things, their peaks half-covered in snow.

Even Stevo had become quieter, more reflective, remarking on the beauty of the place in-between risqué jokes and anecdotes about various women he’d been with. I started to think perhaps I’d misjudged him. Certainly he had a rather bluff manner about him, but perhaps underneath that there was an element of something more sensitive.

“Where are we actually going?” I asked Jake.

He told me the name of the place, but I don’t know how I’d even spell it, and I can’t remember it.

“There’s not really anything there,” he said, “but it’s the starting point for an ancient trail.”

“That’s not all though.” said Stevo.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You didn’t tell him, Jake?” he said.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“About the place.”

“What place?”

“He’s just having a laugh, mate.” said Jake. “Lay off him a bit, Stevo, yeah? Olly’s the sensitive type.”

“Sensitive type.” echoed Stevo, laughing, and Jake laughed too.

Back then I used to think everything was my fault. Now I’d just think they were a pair of idiots and I should extricate myself from whatever idiotic thing they’d got planned, but instead I forced myself to laugh along with them. What we were laughing at, I wasn’t sure. My shy and retiring nature, I supposed.

At least I could appreciate the beauty of the place. It was breathtaking, astonishing, unlike anything I’d ever imagined. Endless forest in vivid green interspersed with vast grey mountains, clouds floating around us on all sides. Like a magical wonderland.

We had to stop as a small herd of deer crossed the road in front of us, some with enormous antlers.

“Drive into them, they’ll clear out the way.” said Stevo. “And if not, we’ll have free venison.”

“Yeah, and who’s going to pay for the damage to the car?” said Jake.

They were laughing, but I wasn’t sure they weren’t serious.

Eventually we pulled into a car park at the side of the road. It was nothing more than a flat area of dirt, but it had the tracks of at least one other car in it, so presumably it was considered a car park.

“We walk from here.” said Jake. “We can get in four hours today before it’s dark.”

“Let’s have a drink first.” said Stevo.

“Later. We need to make progress.”

“Just a quick drink! I picked up something in the service station. Don’t know what it is but it’s 60%.”

“Later.” said Jake.

Stevo swore.

We put the backpacks on our backs and walked off into the forest.

At first I quite enjoyed walking through the forest. I only wished Jake and Stevo would shut up for a bit, or else talk about something other than parties and their various amorous conquests. I spotted plants and animals that were unfamiliar to me, including a massive yellow-and-black lizard. But then the monotony began to get to me. The forest path seemed to go on forever, never really changing. Probably I would have enjoyed it more if the walk could have been conducted in silence, or with silent periods, but that wasn’t the situation.

Initially the path was marked with white-and-blue markers, but soon we strayed off the main path, Jake following a GPS tracker, onto unmarked routes where sometimes it was hard even to discern any trail.

When it began to grow dark I grew a little nervous.

“Shouldn’t we make camp?” I said.

“Shouldn’t we make camp!” echoed Stevo in a mocking lisp.

“It’s almost dark!”

“We haven’t reached our destination yet.” said Jake.

“What is our destination?”

“You’ll see when we get there. Almost there.”

We had been gradually ascending, getting higher and higher, but soon we began to descend sharply. The temperature declined noticeably. Had we not been undergoing vigorous exercise and protected from the wind by the trees, I’m sure we would have been shivering.

We arrived at a boarded-up house in a clearing.

“This is it.” said Jake.

“Faaa-ntastic.” said Stevo, rubbing his hands together in glee.

It seemed we had arrived somewhere quite exciting, but why they were excited by this old ruin of a house, I had no idea.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You’re going to have to tell him.” Stevo said to Jake.

“Tell him what?” I asked.

“Let’s make camp and have a drink first.” said Jake.

“Always time for a drink.” said Stevo. “Olly, you gather wood, mate.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Set up a fire.” he said. “Be sure to get only dry wood. Check it snaps cleanly.”

“We could end up setting fire to the whole forest.” I protested.

“Do you have to be such a loser your whole life?” said Stevo. Then he repeated, “We could end up setting fire to the whole forest.” in his mocking lisp.

“There’s no need to be insulting.” I said.

“Olly, do what he says.” said Jake. “We’ve got to discuss some stuff.”

Feeling rather aggrieved, I went off to look for wood, muttering “Idiot!” under my breath.

Stevo heard me, unfortunately.

“You what did you just say to me?” he said, suddenly angry.

“Nothing.” I said, turning round.

He glared at me, but then said, “Better not ‘ave.” and I returned to the business of finding wood.

Soon we had the tents up and Jake and Stevo had a fire going, and they were trying to toast various baked items they’d bought at the service station we’d passed, on the ends of sticks, only really succeeding in blackening them with smoke. I quietly ate a sandwich.

Stevo and Jake were sharing a tent. I had brought my own, freshly-purchased from a camping shop, and they tried to argue that it would be “fair” if I let one of them have my tent for the night, then I could have it to myself the next night.

I absolutely resisted the ridiculous idea. Why hadn’t they brought separate tents themselves? Fortunately, neither of them could decide who should get my tent, and who should have to share with me, anyway, so the debate was dropped.

They began taking it in turns to drink from the bottle of some liquor or other that Stevo had bought. They tried to get me to drink it, but I’m not keen on other people’s saliva and they didn’t push the issue, wanting it all for themselves.

When they’d almost finished it, Stevo said, “Let’s take a look in the house.”

“Nah.” said Jake. “Better do it tomorrow, when it’s light.”

“It’ll still be dark in there anyway.” said Stevo. “It’s all boarded up.”

“I’m too pissed now.” said Jake. “Better tackle it tomorrow. We need to be systematic.”

“What’s in the house?” I asked.

“Drugs.” said Jake.

“What?”

“Don’t freak out.” said Jake. “We didn’t want to tell you because we knew you’d get on your high horse about it. The bloke who lived here was a scientist, but he went renegade. He made a living manufacturing illegal drugs in there and selling them. The police caught him and he died in prison. We’ve got information that says there’s an undiscovered cache in the basement.”

“You’re going to help us carry the stuff back to Old Blighty.” said Stevo.

“I’m absolutely not.” I said. “I’m not getting mixed up with this!”

“You either help us, or you make your own way back.” said Jake.

“Yeah, and good luck with that.” said Stevo. “Without GPS you’ll never find the way. We’ll tell them to organise a search party when we get home, and they’ll find your rotting corpse if you’re lucky.”

I exploded at the pair of them, but mainly at Jake.

“You absolute cretin!” I shouted, jumping to my feat. “I never agreed to any of this! I’m not going to help you! How do you even think you’re going to get a load of drugs through the airport?”

“We’re not.” said Stevo. “We’re going to drive it to the border, then we’ll take trains to the coast. Then a ferry. Very few checks. Sit down and stop acting like a ponce.”

I strode about, thinking. Suddenly I noticed it had got extremely cold. Surprisingly cold.

“All right, since I’ve no alternative, I’ll help you carry the stuff back to the car.” I said. “After that I’m going to make my own way. I’ll find a main road and catch a bus and get to the airport somehow. Give me my ticket.”

“There’s no ticket.” said Jake. “I didn’t book a return journey, for obvious reasons.”

“You lied to me!” I said.

“Yeah.” said Jake. “No choice, mate.”

“Never mind. I’ll buy a ticket when I get there.”

“‘Ere,” said Stevo suddenly, “it’s bloody freezing. What’s going on?”

“It just gets a bit cool at night.” said Jake. “It’s the altitude. You’ll survive.”

I sat down again by the fire and tried to warm my hands. The fire was gradually dying.

“We should get more firewood.” said Stevo.

“Took me ages to find this.” I said. “Most of it’s not all that dry. We’ll never find another load in the dark.”

As the fire died, we all began to shiver uncontrollably.

“How can it be this cold?” said Stevo.

“I think I might know.” I said.

“What?” said Stevo irritably.

“We’re in a cold-air trap.” I said.

“A what?” said Jake, looking alarmed.

“A cold-air trap. We’re in a concave depression on the side of the mountain. It traps cold air that falls down the mountain, because it’s heavier than warm air. I saw a video about it. We could die here.”

Stevo swore loudly.

“That’s it.” he said. “I’m getting in that house.”

“It could be dangerous in there.” said Jake. “The owner was a bit of a nutter. Who knows what’s in there?”

“I don’t care.” said Stevo, and he produced a heavy crowbar and a hammer from his rucksack.

So that was why they didn’t want to carry two tents. They were weighed down with equipment for breaking and entering.

“Fine,” said Jake, “We’ll all go then. Not much choice.”

“Why would anyone build a house in a …. cold trap?” said Stevo.

That, I couldn’t answer.

“Saves on refrigeration costs at least.” said Jake sardonically.

“I’ve got a torch.” I said. “If we all work together we might be able to find enough wood to keep the fire going.”

Stevo uttered an expletive to indicate his disproval of that idea.

We went to the door of the house. It was protected by a heavy chain. Stevo inserted the crowbar into the padlock and began to pound it with the hammer, taking careful aim but mostly missing it since he was fairly drunk. Eventually he did manage to break the lock. Then he pounded at the edges of the door with the hammer, eventually managing to splinter it off its hinges. He finished the job off with the crowbar and a couple of strong kicks.

“Let’s just find somewhere we can put our tents for the night.” said Jake. “We can investigate the chemical situation tomorrow.”

“No way.” said Stevo. “We’ve got this far. I want to have a look around.”

Stevo made his way cautiously into the house, lighting his way with small but powerful flashlight.

I felt in something of a quandary. Surely, the more I was involved with their illegal scheme, the more likely I was to be seen as a perpetrator by the law (if it ever came to that) rather than an innocent victim who had helped transport drugs only out of absolute necessity.

In the end, my curiosity got the better of me and I followed Jake and Stevo into the house.

Inside, it looked as though someone had certainly lived there, then abandoned it suddenly, then teenagers had broken in and given it a going-over, and finally spiders had worked their magic to achieve the final effect.

A living room of the kind I might have imagined would belong to an elderly Italian man was decorated with graffiti and strewn with webs. Numerous old vases and cups had been smashed and the cupboards ransacked.

“Not much of use here.” said Jake.

“His lab was in the basement.” said Stevo.

“Let’s go then.” said Jake, curiosity apparently having impelled a change of heart.

We made our way down a set of winding stone stairs, brushing spider webs off ourselves. At the bottom was a large room with a curved roof that had clearly once functioned as a chemical laboratory. Bits of apparatus still remained, mostly broken or smashed. There were pipe fittings to supply water, a smashed-up fume cupboard and several vents, their interiors covered in stringy black mould.

“Look at this!” said Stevo, examining a badly-dented machine.

“It’s an NMR machine.” I said.

“What’s that?” said Jake.

“It’s for analysing chemicals. I took some chemistry classes at college.”

“Might be worth a bit.” said Stevo.

“In that state?” said Jake. “Doubt it, mate.”

“There’s nothing here.” I said. “Nothing of value. Everything’s all broken or smashed. Anything of value’s either been scavenged or taken away by the police.”

“Maybe, and maybe not.” said Jake. “Search everything. Look for hidden compartments in the walls.”

He began to run his fingers around the bricks that formed the sides and even the low curved roof of the cellar.

“Hey!” said Stevo suddenly.

“What?” said Jake.

Stevo held up a test tube filled with a white powder and plugged with a cork. It was labelled, but only with the number 357.

“It was behind the machine.” he said.

“What is it?” said Jake.

“Don’t know, mate.” said Stevo. “There’s one way to find out.”

He began to empty some of the powder out onto a dusty workbench.

“What are you going to do?” said Jake.

“Snort it.” said Stevo, rolling up a five euro note.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Worse that happens is it gives me a sore nose.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” I said.

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” echoed Stevo in his silly high-pitched lisping voice.

“He’s right.” said Jake, “give it here.” and he started trying to yank the tube out of Stevo’s grasp.

Stevo clung onto it tenaciously, but eventually Jake succeeded in parting him from it. When Stevo led go of it a little cloud of powder emerged from the tube, drifting past Jake’s face.

Jake wafted it away and spat a couple of times to clear it off his tongue.

“You idiot!” he shouted. “Now I’ve got it on my face.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, man.” said Stevo. “It’s probably harmless.”

“You’ve no idea what it is you ruddy cretin.” said Jake.

I’ve toned down his language a bit to avoid offending the sensitive reader. Trust me, it was pretty fruity.

They started arguing and eventually agreed to a compromise; they would resume investigations the following morning, when perhaps it would at least be warmer. Even in the cellar, we could see our breath in the air.

Outside, the temperature was continuing to drop. It had got amazingly cold for the time of year, and the grass was thick with frost that hadn’t been there when we’d entered the house. We began to move the tents into the house.

We’d almost finished when Jake sat down heavily against the wall.

“What’s up with you?” said Stevo. “Does sir feel like taking a little rest now? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re in danger of freezing to death here, mate.”

“I don’t feel too good.” said Jake miserably.

He was sniffing heavily.

“You’ll feel better when we’re in the tents.” said Stevo.

He nodded, but then a trickle of blood emerged from his nose.

“Bloody hell, mate.” said Stevo.

I found a packet of tissues and gave them to Jake. He began mopping at the blood but it seemed like it just wasn’t stopping.

“He needs to lie down.” I said to Stevo. “On his side.”

“No, you idiot, he needs to keep his head elevated. Lying down will make it worse.”

“Maybe, but he might pass out like that.”

We began to argue about it. Meanwhile Jake began shivering again. In the light of the torch, we could see that all the colour had drained from his face. He appeared an ashen grey.

“I need to lie down.” he said, so that settled it.

Soon we had Jake lying in the tent. The flow of blood from his nose had lessened but not stopped. We quickly used up an entire roll of toilet paper trying to soak up the blood. Fortunately I’d also brought my own since I hadn’t trusted Jake and Stevo to bring all the stuff we’d need, and Jake got halfway through that as well before the blood finally stopped, and he lay there shivering and panting.

“Why’s he breathing like that?” said Stevo.

Jake’s breathing did seem unusually laboured.

“Maybe it’s the blood loss.” I suggested. “Fewer blood cells to carry the oxygen around. I think we need to dial emergency and see if they can rescue us.”

Even as I said it I was thinking that Jake probably hadn’t lost more than a pint of blood, and you can safely donate that much, so the blood loss didn’t really explain it.

“No way.” said Stevo. “That’s absolutely not happening. We’re not supposed to be here. I’ve already got a couple of convictions. Another one and they’ll lock me up. We’ll walk out of here when he’s better.”

Jake didn’t seem all that bad, so I let it go.

That night I went to sleep shivering, my sleeping bag pulled over my head, leaving only a tiny space for air, listening to the sound of Jake’s raspy breathing. I had the impression it was getting worse.

It took me a long time to get to sleep, but eventually, tired from the trek, I managed it.

In the morning, I was woken up by Stevo kicking my ankles, having unzipped my tent.

“Wake up.” he said. “Jake’s gone. We need to find him.”

“What?” I said.

“He’s bloody gone, mate. Help me look.”

“He’s probably gone to use the toilet.” I said, immediately conscious that my language was excessively delicate, given that there there was no actual toilet out there. But Stevo didn’t pick up on it. “Let me make myself a coffee first.” I added.

I had a little camping stove and instant coffee.

Then I looked at Stevo and realised he was half-covered in blood.

“I woke up in a pool of blood.” he said, wildly, seasoning his speech with a good many curses. “He might be dead or something.”

“OK.” I said, and I scrambled to get out of my sleeping back.

There was a trail of drips of blood leading directly out of the door. I had the impression the trail was almost frozen, but that seemed impossible. The air was already significantly warmer and Jake surely couldn’t have got up in the night to wander about in the forest.

Outside, there was no sign of Jake, except that I spotted a few drops of blood that had fallen on sticks, the trail of blood apparently leading off down the faint track by which we’d arrived.

“Maybe he got confused due to the loss of blood and he’s trying to walk home without us.” I suggested.

“Yeah.” said Stevo, then he thought about it a bit more and said, more enthusiastically, “Yeah! We’d better go and find him. I can’t have people trying to say I’ve murdered the b*****d.”

Stevo started off down the trail. I rolled my eyes, sighed heavily and started after him. I really had the impression that, even now, Stevo was only thinking of himself.

I’m not sure how far we walked down the trail. Maybe a couple of miles. I kept saying we should go back, rather than risk losing our way and getting separated from our tents and other stuff, but Stevo insisted on continuing on, convinced Jake was somewhere up ahead. I couldn’t spot any more drops of blood.

Eventually even Stevo agreed that it was useless, and that we might as well turn around. We began to walk back towards the house, where our tents still stood in the living room.

“This is all your fault, you idiot.” said Stevo irritably.

“How’s it my fault?”

“If it was just us two, we wouldn’t have messed it all up. We’d be walking out of here with the stash by now.”

I bit my tongue. No point arguing with this lunatic, I thought.

We were almost back at the tents when Stevo stopped short. I was walking behind him and I almost ran into him. I looked up, and had a bit of a fright.

There was Jake. He was standing in front of us, staring at us with a blank expression on his face. He looked awful. He had lost his jacket somewhere, and a discharge of bloody mucus from his nose had coated his mouth and the front of his sweater. He was as pale as death, but it was his eyes that disturbed me the most. They were wide, but vacant, heavily bloodshot, slightly yellowish and rimmed around with blood.

“What the hell’s happened to you mate?” said Stevo, and he went to take hold of Jake, presumably intending to turn him around and lead him back to the camp.

He jumped back suddenly.

“Ow!” he shouted. “The b*****d’s stabbed me!”

In Jake’s hand was a pocket knife, locked open.

We backed away slowly, and Jake began to slowly raise the knife. Stevo was looking at the blood on his hand, which had emerged from a cut on his side. It didn’t look too serious, but then, I’m not a doctor.

Suddenly Stevo shouted, “Run!” and Jake simultaneously lurched towards us.

We ran, back down the trail, away from the tents. I hardly dared pause to look behind me, but I could hear Jake running after us, snapping twigs and crashing through tree branches that overhung the trail.

Gradually we managed to get a little bit ahead of him, running for our lives, but then Stevo suddenly stopped, clutching his side.

“I can’t go any further!” he said.

“We have to!” I told him. “He’ll be here in a minute. Listen!”

The crashing and snapping sounds of Jake drawing ever-closer was all too audible.

Stevo sank to a sitting position, sliding down a tree. He was very pale.

“I can’t.” he said, and he began to cry.

I looked around desperately for a place to hide. There was a large patch of bracken just a little way off the trail.

“We can lie in the ferns.” I said. “Come on.”

I yanked Stevo up. His legs seemed to have turned to jelly, and he could barely stand. Clearly he had used up his last reserves of energy. Perhaps he was bleeding internally; I had no idea.

He staggered over to the bracken while I heavily supported him, and we lay down in it.

He was still crying.

“Sshh!” I said. “Don’t make a sound!”

He did his best to be quiet, but his breathing was loud and irregular.

I froze, hardly daring to breathe myself, as Jake ran past the point where we had departed the trail. Then I heard him stop, pause, and begin to walk back towards us. Soon I could partially see him, in-between the fronds of the ferns.

“I won’t hurt you!” he shouted.

His voice sounded thick and slurred, as though he was drunk and his face full of blood and mucus.

Stevo was whimpering quietly.

“I’ve realised something.” shouted Jake. “We don’t need to fear death! It’s just like passing through a door. We can all go together. Stevo, where are you? I can smell your fear! Don’t be afraid! Soon we’ll all be together in Valhalla!”

Then he began laughing derangedly; a high-pitched hysterical laugh.

Stevo grabbed me.

“Don’t let him get me!” he whispered frantically. “Please don’t let him get me!”

I tried to shush him into being quiet, but it was too late. Jake had heard him.

“There you are!” he said, and he ran at us holding the knife out in front of him.

I sprang at him in a delirium of fear and tried to grab the knife, but he managed to sink it into my shoulder. As I reeled back in pain, he fell on Stevo and began stabbing him frantically, over and over again.

Blood was pouring from my wounded shoulder.

Jake began stabbing Stevo’s neck and eyes. There was nothing I could do. It was too late. No-one could survive that. I turned and fled, running uncaringly through brambles and thickets.

“Come back!” Jake shouted. “It’s destiny! You can’t run from destiny!”

I glanced backwards, and I saw him apparently commence eating Stevo’s face.

I ran like a maniac. I hardly cared if I died of cold in that forest, as long as I didn’t die at Jake’s unhinged hands. Periodically I thought I could hear Jake behind me, but it was hard to be sure.

Eventually I had to stop. I was spent. I couldn’t run any further. I could only stumble numbly forwards.

The forest seemed endless. I had long since departed from any kind of trail or path. There was only endless green, sometimes sloping uphill and sometimes downwards, on and on.

You can hardly imagine my relief when I staggered onto a road. It wasn’t much of a road, but it was enough of one that a 4-wheel-drive car might have navigated it.

The road led eventually to a proper road, and there, after walking along for perhaps an hour, I flagged down a passing motorist, letting myself into his car, shivering, shaking and bleeding, and desperately shouting “Drive!”

I’m lucky he didn’t throw me out immediately, but he must have seen that I was in a bad state, and desperately afraid of something. I still kept expecting Jake to spring out of the bushes at any moment.

Jake was never found, although they found the knife, with his fingerprints all over it. He had dropped it about a mile away from where he had killed Stevo, and a hiker came across it by chance.

They found Stevo without too much trouble. They brought his body back to the UK. I didn’t attend his funeral. After all, I didn’t really know him, or like him.

I begged the police to somehow get the Italian authorities to investigate the house, emphasising they must warn the Italians about the tube of mysterious white powder, but I’m not sure anything was done.

I managed to find out a bit about the man who’d lived there. He had worked for a while in Serbia as a psychologist, and as a consultant to a large chemical company in Italy. Before that, he’d passed a spell in the Italian army. It was an odd combination.

There are rumours on the internet, on old Italian forums, that he is still alive, and that his incarceration was only some sort cover.

“They always protect their own.” said an anonymous poster, and it was unclear to whom “they” referred, but the thread as a whole involved intelligence agencies, mafia, and drug lords.

I hope they’re wrong. I hope he’s dead.

As for Jake, he probably died of hypothermia or the effects of the chemical somewhere in the foothills of the Alps. Unless someone happens across him, I suppose we’ll never know.

The house was a massive old thing built of stone and it had been there long before the estate had been built, or even the scattering of houses that existed before the estate in that area.

Part of my job at the local council was dealing with these endless complaints. I remember the morning well; I put on my cheap nylon shirt and fixed a tie around my neck, as I was required to do, put on my cheap suit and went to catch the bus as usual.

I felt somehow horribly depressed and I was seriously considering visiting a doctor and getting a prescription of something or other; anything that might help.

I sat on the bus watching the serried rows of nearly identical houses pass by, and then the shops and takeaways of the town, with their massive garish printed signs, most of them rather rundown except for the outlets of chain stores interspersed between them.

The people walking past looked glum.

This is modern Britain, I thought to myself. Monstrous in its ugliness.

But no, I’m probably inventing memories here. I probably didn’t think that. At the time, I probably accepted it all as normal. It was normal, and if anyone objected, there was always a doctor ready to treat the chemical imbalance in their brain.

At the office, Simon told me there’d been another complaint about Featherstone.

“He’s up to his old tricks.” said Simon. “The next step is going to be court proceedings.”

“I’ll go and have a word with him.” I said.

“That didn’t do any good last time.” said Simon. “Mark my words, he’s going to end up losing his house over this.”

“That’s not going to happen.” I said.

“It’s happened before.” said Simon. “That family over by the river. They got so many fines that had to sell up just to pay them. Just as well. Absolute nuisance the lot of them.”

“Leave it to me.” I said. “I’m sure he’ll see sense.”

I went immediately to Featherstone’s house, walking all the way to save having to wait for a bus, and knocked on the door.

There was an enormous intermittent buzzing coming from inside the house, and flashes of intensely bright light that lit up the windows.

I had to knock four times and shout a bit before he eventually answered.

Featherstone always unsettled me. He had piercing blue eyes, undimmed by age, that seemed to bore right into me and take in my entire soul in a single glance. It wasn’t that he was in any way aggressive, but rather that he seemed to possess an uncanny intelligence that saw into the heart of everything and everyone.

“We’ve had more complaints.” I said. “Listen, this is getting really serious. I’m trying to hold them off but they’re going to take you to court if this carries on much longer. You know, we’ve seen people lose their whole house because they couldn’t afford the fines and people kept complaining —”

He held up a hand to silence me.

“I need your help with something.” he said. “Come in.”

“We’re not supposed to —” I began, but he swiftly interjected with a resounding “Nonsense! Can’t help an old man in his own house? Never heard of such a thing.”

Inside I froze to the spot out of sheer astonishment. Where I expected the far wall of the living room was instead a massive construction of metal wires and pipes, with a kind of layered metal grid in the middle of it all, taking up most of the wall.

“What is this?” I asked him.

“No time to explain.” he said. “Here, you stand by this panel of switches. If I disappear, I want you to press this switch, then that one, then increase the power here to maximum. Have you got that?”

“Disappear?” I asked, faintly.

“Tell me what I just said.”

I repeated his instructions and he nodded in satisfaction.

“Perfect.” he said.

Then he began to flick various switches and fiddle with dials.

“What are you doing?”

“Powering it up. It’s very fortunate you’re here. I can’t risk attempting temporal transmigration again without you.”

“Temporal transmigration?”

“You’ll understand everything shortly. Lives depend on what we’re about to do here.”

“I have to get back to the council.”

“Nonsense.” he said again, more quietly this time. “A man of your talents wasted at the council? It’s quite out of the question.”

The metal grills began to glow with an unearthly green. Soon I thought I could discern shapes moving about behind the grills, presumably in the kitchen at the back of the house.

“What are we looking at here?” I said.

“Watch.” said Featherstone, and gradually the green glow died away and I saw a horrible sight.

I was looking into a room containing four people who seemed in an awful state; a man and a woman and young two girls. Presumably they were all one family.

The girls were ashen-grey and lay emaciated on flimsy mattresses on the floor. The woman was trying to do something involving a tall plastic container and some dirty water, and the man was pacing about ranting about something. The woman had lost part of her blonde hair and was covered in scaly patches of sore skin, but it was the man who appeared in the worst state of all of them. He was bald apart from some wispy bits of hair and he was covered in festering yellowish sores.

Featherstone put his hands out as if feeling for a pane of glass between us and them and his hands seemed to land on something solid.

“I think I can get through.” he said, and he seemed to try to push himself forwards, but after a few brief moments he said, “Damn! It’s still too strong.”

He fell back, almost as if repelled by an invisible force, staggering to keep his balance, and the nightmare vision abruptly disappeared.

“Who are they?” I said. “We have to help them!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do!” he said. “I just can’t seem to manage to get to them. The temporal shuttling is too strong.”

“Temporal —”

He turned to face me.

“These people are living in the future. I came upon them quite by accident, while attempting to build the portal. Evidently a terrible war has taken place. They’re suffering radiation sickness and they’re starving. I could help them, if only I could get to them. I’m so close! If only I had more energy. More power. I need a power station, ideally.”

“The future?” I said. “How is it possible?”

He started flapping and looking for pens and paper.

“Sit down.” he said. “I’ll explain it.”

He spent two hours attempting to explain to me how his machine worked. I kept trying to leave, then he’d say something so outlandish that I had to sit down again, out of curiosity, and on it went for a whole two hours.

I was jolted out of the spell by my phone going off. It was Simon, asking where I was.

“I have to go.” I said.

“I need your help.” he said. “You’re the only person I’ve told about all this. Go to work and hand in your notice. I have plenty of money; you needn’t worry about that.”

“I’m not a scientist.”

He clapped me on the shoulder.

“You’re made of the right stuff.” he said. “I can see it. Quit your job and come and work for me. You can see I’m on the verge of something big, and those people are depending on us. Besides, I need power, and you understand how things work. You know how to make things happen. Together, we can get the apparatus working.”

I went away in a daze, hardly understanding what I’d just seen.

For the rest of the day at work I got nothing done at all, but no-one noticed. Actually I could have gone weeks in that job doing nothing and no-one would have noticed.

I wasn’t going to hand in my notice though. That seemed absolutely mad.

The next day I went to work as usual.

“Mindy wants to prosecute Featherstone.” said Simon, almost as soon as I’d got through the door, and he handed me a sheaf of papers. “Can you process it?”

Something in me snapped.

“Sure.” I said, and I took the papers immediately to the shredder and started feeding them in.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said Simon.

“I’m resigning.” I said. “Today. Without notice. They can keep my last pay packet if it makes them happy.”

“Paul, what’s got into you?” said Simon. “You can’t throw away your whole career here, just like that. In two years you could go up a whole pay grade, get more responsibility.”

“Hard pass.” I said, feeding the last of the papers into the shredder.

Then I scribbled a resignation letter on a piece of paper that I’d only half-shredded, went to Mindy’s office and slapped it down on her desk. Then I walked out, shouting “Bye, Simon!”

I suppose I had stored up a certain amount of resentment over the years.

I went straight to Featherstone’s house. An enormous bang rang out as I walked up the driveway, making the fence of Featherstone’s property vibrate.

I knocked on the door, and Featherstone appeared, all smiles.

“Do come in.” he said. “I knew you’d see sense.”

“I’ll run out of money in about a month.” I said.

“Don’t worry about that, dear boy.” he said.

“What was that explosion I heard?”

“A slight inequality in pressure between the target zone and the Earth. The automatic systems cut it off before it could do any harm. Don’t worry about it. Entirely innocuous.”

“Listen here, Featherstone, I’d be honoured to work for you, but you have to understand, they’re literally about to issue you a court summons. These explosions and weird odours and flashes of light are frightening the horses. People are getting restless and perturbed.”

The expression on his face changed instantly.

“I see.” he said. “Oh dear, imagine that, taking me to court! Whatever am I to do?”

I was about to console him and offer advice, then I realised he was being sarcastic.

“As a matter of fact, I’m working on a solution. Right now, I need you to help me put together a gigantic capacitor bank, to supply the power we need.”

I worked for the professor for six months, mainly helping him to assemble a huge power supply. During that time he received ever-more threatening letters from the council and various parts of the legal system. Every time I raised the topic, he brushed it aside. He entirely ignored a court summons and after that I fully expected the police to turn up at any moment.

Eventually they did, two of them, but he refused to answer the door. They went away, but I knew they’d be back.

Meanwhile we periodically looked in on the family he’d found. Their suffering was horrible to watch. Every week they looked worse than the last, and we could do nothing to help them, try as we might.

At the end of six months, they mostly just lay on their beds, dying, covered in weeping sores.

Featherstone and I got rather glum.

“There must be something we’ve missed.” he said. “The apparatus is so close to working.”

But if there was something we had missed, we had no idea what it was.

That night I had a dream. I was walking on a distant planet, surrounded by strange vegetation. I saw the ruins of an ancient advanced civilisation and the graves of creatures that looked nothing like anything that can be found on the Earth.

Gradually, as I approached waking, I began to question how I’d got there. I realised we had used Featherstone’s apparatus as a portal not to the future, but to the far-side of the galaxy.

I jumped out of bed, full of excitement. When I arrived at Featherstone’s house I saw police milling about outside, so I made a detour and got in via the back.

Featherstone was sitting watching the family dying through the portal, rubbing the sides of his face with his hands, as if wrestling with terrible thoughts.

“Featherstone!” I said. “I’ve got it!”

“I fear it’s too late for them.” he said, miserably. “Medical science can’t help them now.”

“Our medical science, maybe not.” I said. “But what if we use the portal to find an advanced civilisation in the present time, and use their technology?”

I could see the thought had made an impact on him. He sat bolt upright, rather resembling a hare.

“Any civilisation that’s developed that kind of technology may pose a grave danger to humanity.” he said, thoughtfully.

“We find a civilisation that’s ended. The ruins of a civilisation. But highly advanced. If we can view their apparatus at close hand, maybe we can replicate it.”

“That might actually work. We’d need to fix up an automatic computer system that scans one distant planet after another, till we find the one we want.”

“How long do you think they’ll last for?” I said, eyeing the terrible sight of the dying family.

“Two weeks if we’re lucky.” said Featherstone.

“Then we’d better get to work.”

Now even I was actively collaborating in ignoring the police. I knew very well they’d get a warrant and might burst in at any time. I could only hope we’d have enough time to make significant progress first.

It seemed a faint hope. Even if we managed to find the remains of an advanced civilisation, how would we manage to comprehend its works rapidly enough to save the family?

Eventually the police would break down the door and probably confiscate whatever they found. Featherstone had made himself too much of a nuisance for too long. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if they suspected him of murdering people. They’d probably break down the door during the day rather than at night, and they’d probably warn him first. We’d have time to shut down the portal, if it was open, but no more.

We set to work to reconfigure the portal to look around our galaxy at the present time, although what can be said to exist contemporaneously and what exists in the past or the future becomes a matter for philosophers and physicist to conjecture with, when dealing with immense distances. Featherstone’s apparatus somehow got around the usual laws of physics in ways that I didn’t fully grasp, although he had been giving me tutorials on physics and on his findings.

We set up a computer system that could analyse light coming in through the portal, and from that infer atmospheric pressure and the composition of atmospheric gasses. Featherstone though we needed somewhere with an atmosphere much like our own, except containing traces of certain pollutants and various radioactive emanations which he believed would remain present in the air after the death of a civilisation.

Eventually, incredibly—although, the incredible by then had almost ceased to astonish me—we found what we were looking for; a planet with an extremely promising atmosphere. At a certain point on the planet’s surface we found the smouldering remains of a forest of some sort. Featherstone thought a fire must have got started by lightning, and he thought we might find ancient ruins there that might otherwise be obscured by trees and vegetation. I suggested we look around the edge of the burnt area, where perhaps buildings might have survived the fire, but where the vegetation might still have burned away.

“We’ll open the portal at ground level and see if we can find anything interesting.” he said.

The portal opened onto what looked like a kind of hellish wasteland. The fire had caused vast devastation over many hundreds of square miles. We began to run along the edge of it at enormous speed, watching carefully for signs of the ruins of our hypothesised civilisation.

And then, something caught my attention. I wasn’t sure what I had seen; it had flitted by far too quickly, but I felt it was something important.

I remember reading once that people who learn certain sorts of card games requiring skill can learn to get better at the games by unconsciously perceiving patterns before they are even able to consciously articulate those patterns, so I believe the unconscious is, in some sense, quicker at certain types of perception than the conscious. For this reason, I am never quick to dismiss “gut feelings”, which may simply arise from the unconscious perception of real patterns.

We slowed the portal’s speed and wound it back, then proceeded gradually forwards.

To our absolute astonishment, we saw a figure walking along through the smouldering remains of the fire poking at things with a stick. This was no alien, but a human being, wearing a mixture of what looked like clothes of his own making combined with the ragged and repeatedly-repaired remains of clothing from our own era. In spite of all that, he appeared well-nourished and more or less healthy.

We stopped the portal in front of him. On the ground were pieces of some kind of strange device, which he was examining and turning over.

“If only we could get through the portal.” said Featherstone.

At that moment, the man happened to start off towards us, and instead of walking past the portal, he walked right through it. Suddenly there he was, in Featherstone’s living room, gasping for air and staggering in confusion.

“Good Heavens!” said the man. “You got it working!”

“Who are you?” said Featherstone.

“Don’t you know?” said the man.

“We’ve no idea.” I said.

“I thought you were looking for me.” said the man.

“Absolutely not.” said Featherstone. “We don’t know who you are.”

“Oh.” he said. “Well, just as well. This technology is dangerous. What year is it and where am I?”

The man explained that he had developed a kind of portal similar to our own, and had been marooned on a distant planet for five years, during which time he had fought off many horrifying creatures and had learned mostly by trial and error which plants and animals he could safely eat, poisoning himself repeatedly in the process, but somehow managing to survive.

His name was Goff, which was short for Godfrey. When he had stepped through our portal, he had thought we were working with his friends, who he believed were searching for him. This would, of course, mean that his friends had shared the secret of the portal technology with other people, and he was relieved to find that, in fact, only we knew how the portal worked—and possibly his friends, if they had ever succeeded in getting Goff’s old portal working again, because apparently it had suffered some sort of mishap.

The planet on which he had been marooned had indeed once hosted a highly-advanced civilisation, which Goff had investigated very extensively, with the mind of a first-class scholar.

This civilisation, he said, had once consisted of creatures that looked nothing like human beings, or even any sort of creature to be found on the Earth, but were immensely intelligent. Portal technology had ruined them, and they had used it to wage war on each other until one final battle was fought, with nuclear weapons.

By then, the portal technology had become taboo, and most references to it had been deliberately destroyed. If any portal remained on the planet, Goff hadn’t been able to find it. He believed the last remaining portals had been destroyed in the nuclear war.

He was working on building a portal using his own theories, and had expected to be able to return to the Earth soon, but was having trouble finding all the parts he needed. That was why he had set fire to a forest, with the intent of uncovering old buildings that might contain whatever he required.

“I don’t understand how you were able to walk through the portal.” said Featherstone.

“Well, it’s quite simple.” said Goff. “You’ve got it the wrong way round.”

He proceeded to show us exactly how to reconfigure the portal so that it would actually work. Goff hadn’t got as far in his own research as travelling through time, and he was amazed when we told him about the family we had found, living far into the distant future.

“We need drugs that can treat radiation sickness and the results of advanced radiation exposure,” said Featherstone, “combined with starvation and dehydration, and probably heavy metal poisoning.”

“That technology exists on my planet.” said Goff, who seemingly now considered himself the owner of the alien planet.

“Will it work on humans, if the aliens looked nothing like us?” I asked him.

“Oh yes.” said Goff. “It works at the cellular level, repairing damage by intelligently copying healthy cells. How do you think I’ve remained in good health? You should have seen me three years ago. I was very close to death.”

“Then we can rescue those people.” I said.

“We must set to work immediately.” said Featherstone. “You must show us were to find this technology you speak of.”

A week later, we’d reconfigured the portal so that it actually worked, and we’d collected the technology we needed from the ancient ruins that littered the planet.

We devised a plan. The atmosphere of the future Earth was too dangerous for any of us to risk exposure and the family were too far gone to simply transport back to the Earth right away. Even a small change in atmospheric pressure or a sudden change in temperature might finish them off, and they were horribly contaminated. Passing through the portal was physically taxing, for a variety of reasons. We would have to approach the rescue systematically.

Peter Fripley and his wife Clara Fripley had taken steps when the threat of war had loomed on the horizon. They had spent all their savings on medications and on devices that they thought might protect them and their two girls, Lucy and Ellena.

Their friends had laughed at them, and had informed them that, were nuclear war to break out, everyone would be dead anyway, so there was little point preparing.

When the war came, they were ready.

They had survived long after all their friends and neighbours had died. They had generously shared whatever they could afford to share, while prioritising their children’s future, but in the end, nevertheless, only they had remained.

For months they had clung to life, Peter making trips out into the wasteland, braving the radiation-addled bands of thugs and the monstrous half-living creatures, many of them once beloved pets, that roamed the desolate ruins of their suburb.

Clara had worked endlessly to attempt to purify water and to prepare palatable food from whatever Peter found, and to try to buoy the spirits of Lucy and Ellena, but in the end, they had to face the fact that they were dying.

“Our last Christmas together.” rasped Peter, exhaling from radiation-scarred lungs, his arm around Clara, ignoring the pain from Clara’s clothes rubbing against his radiation sores.

By Clara’s side lay Ellena, and Lucy lay by Peter’s side. The girls were asleep. By then, they mercifully slept most of the time, waking only to cry, Clara no longer able to persuade them to eat.

When Christmas Eve arrived, they didn’t expect to make it to January. They had fought bravely, but the prospect of death now seemed almost a relief. They had accepted it, at long last.

Clara got up to try to filter water, but Peter waved at her listlessly from the bed.

“There’s no point, my love.” he said. “We’re only prolonging our pain.”

She turned around, intending to argue with him. Then something caught her eye.

“What’s that?” she rasped. “Am I hallucinating?”

Peter followed her line of sight. In the air, in the middle of the room, was a curious twinkling, as if glitter had been thrown into the air. As they watched, a thousand tiny particles seemed to shine like tiny stars. Then all at once, a large cardboard box seemed to fall from nowhere and the twinkling disappeared.

“Do you see it?” said Clara.

“I see it.” said Peter, astonished.

Clara stumbled over to the box and opened it.

Lying on top was a hand-written paper, the writing in an archaic form of English.

“It says the box contains medicine, food and water, and a portable heater.” she said numbly. “It says rescue is coming soon. We’re to take the medicine and stay put.”

“Where did it come from?” said Peter.

“From God.” said Clara, tears forming in her eyes. “Quickly, help me.”

Together they unpacked the box.

“What good is food when we can’t manage to eat?” said Peter.

The box included a tube of tiny pills, with instructions to take one every hour, and a liquid that the paper said would rehydrate them.

Peter drank some of it, expecting to begin vomiting, but instead he felt the pain in his throat magically dissipate as the liquid flowed down it.

“It’s amazing!” he said excitedly. “Here, drink some!”

Clara tried it too, with the same result.

“Wake up the girls!” she said, her eyes filled with hope for the first time in many weeks.

They roused the children; Lucy in particular was very close to death, but after drinking the liquid she smiled and asked, “Are we in Heaven now?”

“I don’t think so.” said Peter, laughing.

They shared out the tiny green pills, taking one each.

They following day they awoke feeling hungry instead of nauseous as usual, and they eagerly investigated the food in the box.

The box contains a number of packages which, when a cord was pulled, sprang open, exposing heated food.

Soon they were feasting on the contents, the girls eating cakes and tiny soft deserts while Peter tried to persuade them to eat something savoury instead.

“Let them eat what they like.” said Clara. “It’s a miracle that any of us are eating at all.”

Over the next month, more packages arrived, with further instructions to await rescue.

Their sores healed and their hair began to grow back at an astonishing pace.

“We should get out of here.” said Peter, looking through the cracks in the boarded-up window. “Find somewhere where there’s less radiation.”

“The box says to stay where we are.” said Clara. “Let’s wait.”

The next day they were eating lunch when there was a strange sound, and a hole appeared in the wall of their living room. Through it they could see only greenish glowing mist. Then a figure stepped through the mist and into their living room. It was entirely dressed in black and wore a helmet that completely covered its face.

“I’m Goff.” it said. “I’m here to rescue you. Come with me.”

The figure stepped back into the mist, and they followed, in a daze.

They emerged into Featherstone’s living room.

“Greetings, my dear people.” said Featherstone, extending his hand to all of them one by one, the girls shaking his hand solemnly.

“Where are we?” said Peter.

“You’re still on the Earth, but well over a century before the war.” said Featherstone.

Goff removed his helmet.

“This is our dear friend and colleague, Godfrey,” said Featherstone. “and this is Paul, who helped to develop the portal technology and fended off bureaucratic interference.”

I smiled at them. I was beaming uncontrollably. It was a moment of euphoria for all of us.

They were wearing new clothes we’d sent them but they were still all horribly radioactive and would require decontamination over several months. Featherstone and Godfrey and I had all taken one of the radiation-repair pills as a precaution, since even standing near the family for a short while was like getting an x-ray.

At that moment, there was a huge pounding on the door.

We’d put thick curtains up over the window at the front and reinforced it with with steel struts, so I went upstairs and peered out from the upper floor.

Below was assembled a large collection of people from the police and the council. I recognised Simon among them.

“Hello Simon!” I said.

“Paul!” he said, surprised. “What are doing in there?”

“I work for Featherstone.” I said.

A policewoman said something in Simon’s ear. He shouted up to me.

“We’re going to break down the door if you don’t let us in.” he said. “Sorry, Paul.”

“OK, we’ll open it.” I said. “Just give me a little while.”

I shut the window as Simon was shouting something else, but I didn’t hear what.

Downstairs in the living room, I explained the situation to Featherstone, Goff, and the astonished family.

“Open the portal to my planet and we’ll move everything there.” said Goff immediately. “I know a lovely spot where we can set up a new laboratory.”

“We need living quarters, Goff.” I said, glancing at the family.

“Yes, yes, there’s old buildings there that we could easily convert into houses.” he said.

We quickly began to recalibrate the portal. Outside, the police began shouting at us through a megaphone.

Soon the portal was open, and we beheld a landscape that was indeed quite lovely. Numerous ancient small buildings dotted a green hillside, and on top of the hill stood a building somewhat resembling a cross between an observatory and a church, which Goff said would make a fine laboratory.

“Are you sure there are no existing inhabitants?” said Featherstone.

“They’re all dead.” said Goff. “There’s a bit of radiation but if we take a pill once a month we’ll be fine.”

“Then let’s get to work.” said Featherstone.

“We’ll help.” said Clara.

Peter and Clara hardly knew what was going on, but they understand the general situation in outline. They understand that we had rescued them and that people we absolutely couldn’t deal with were about to break in.

“Certainly not.” said Featherstone. “You must relax and continue your recovery.”

But they insisted on helping anyway, and soon we were collecting everything we thought might be useful, including all of Featherstone’s apparatus, and throwing it through the portal onto the grass on Goff’s planet.

The most unsettling bit of the whole procedure was when we had to throw bits of the portal technology itself onto the planet, so that we could maintain the portal from the other side, otherwise the police would discover it and soon the people of the Earth would likely suffer the same fate as the earlier inhabitants of Goff’s planet. At that point the portal could easily have inadvertently been closed, but we managed to pull it off.

We had more or less finished when we heard the sound of the door splintering off its hinges.

“Quickly! Through the portal!” said Featherstone and we dove through the portal and onto the soft grass on the other side.

The last thing we saw was a policeman staring at us in astonishment, before Featherstone pushed a button and the portal disappeared.

We lay on the grass, panting.

“Technically, it’s Christmas here.” said Goff.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, it’s four days after the shortest day of the year. On Earth, that would be Christmas.”

“Well then, Merry Christmas everyone.” said Featherstone.

“Do we get presents?” said Lucy.

“You most certainly do.” said Featherstone. “Let’s go and see what we can find.”

The boiler was old, almost unbelievably so, and barely worked. At times it made an odd buzzing sound, and at other times it emitted a high-pitched whining. I had grown slightly afraid of it, and I didn’t much like having my head next to it, but there was no alternative if I was to tackle the mould.

My head was almost pressed against it when the thermostat happened to turn on. There was enough time for me to perceive the red light blinking on, and then the next thing I remembered, I woke up lying in the bath, the back of my head bleeding.

I gingerly washed the blood off my hair. It was painful but it didn’t seem as though I’d sustained any really serious injury. What bothered me more than the blood was the question of how I’d ended up unconscious in the bath.

I ran through several different theories. It was possible I’d fainted due to some underlying condition, but it seemed too much of a coincidence that the thermostat had turned itself on at that exact moment. I wondered if I’d received an electric shock to my head from the boiler, but my head hadn’t actually been touching it and it didn’t seem possible that a spark had made such a long leap, of several centimetres at the minimum.

I decided to carry out systematic experiments, placing a chair under the boiler and putting cushions on the chair, so that I could sit on it with my head as close to the boiler as possible, but a little less close than previously.

You may imagine my astonishment when I discovered that every time the boiler switched itself on, when my head was within fifty millimetres of it, it created a strong stupefying effect. Forty millimetres was as close as I dare place my head to it; at that distance, it almost rendered me unconscious.

I bought a new boiler and substituted it for the old one, hoping my landlord wouldn’t notice, or would be pleased, since the replacement was clearly superior to the one it was replacing.

As for the old boiler, I sealed off its pipes, fixed a vent into the top of it and stood it on the floor in my bedroom, a quarter full of water, so I could better investigate its curious emanations.

By analysing the electromagnetic radiation it emitted upon activation of the heating coil with an oscilloscope attached to a small coil, I was able to determine that it emitted a spectrum of very particular frequencies. An internal spark, created by the corrosion at the site of a previous effort at repair, was somehow resonating in a way that was quite distinctive.

I set to work building a system of coils and capacitors, driven by an external circuit, that would replicate those precise frequencies. When I’d finished, the new circuit created an oscilloscope trace that appeared nearly identical to the boiler itself. I place the circuit on my pillow, set a timer to activate it, and lay down with my head next to it, waiting to see what would happen. The circuit was supposed to sound a buzzer at the same time that it produced the electromagnetic wave pulse, so that I would know when I was being exposed to the radiation.

The next thing I remember, I was confused, having emerged apparently from a deep sleep. I couldn’t understand why I had been asleep. I looked around, saw the circuit and remembered everything.

I hadn’t even remained conscious long enough to consciously perceive the sound of the buzzer; either that, or the pulse had created a kind of fleeting amnesia that had prevented the sound of the buzzer being recorded in my memory.

I jumped up, very excited. I had clearly discovered something extremely interesting, with many possible applications. Brief operations, such as the extraction of a tooth, could be performed without any traditional anaesthetic. Dangerous criminals wielding guns could be pacified without a shot being fired. Rabid wild animals could be harmlessly and temporarily put to sleep. Really the possibilities were endless. Then it occurred to me that my discovery could form the basis of a powerful military-grade weapon, and I realised that I probably ought to think very carefully about the implications of publicising my work, before going full steam ahead with it.

I decided to push that issue to the back of my mind for a time, while I investigated the phenomenon more fully. There was much to be done. I needed to quantify the precise field strengths needed to exert the effect. The exact frequencies that brought it about would need to be determined accurately. I needed to figure out whether a sustained half-sleep could be produced, or only full unconsciousness.

Then, of course, there was the question of safety. That was going to be harder to tackle. The nature of the thing, being a simple brief EM pulse, incapable of directly damaging DNA, seemed to argue in favour of its harmlessness, but my study of the history of science had taught me that one cannot simply assume the answers to questions on the basis of plausible-sounding theory. The matter must be determined empirically somehow.

All too often, even scientists themselves have confused plausibility for fact. The two are not the same. A plausible-sounding but incorrect theory can often successfully deceive even people who consider themselves scientifically-minded sceptics. I would even suggest those people are particularly easy to deceive via a theory that “sounds scientific”. The lack of empirical proof of the key thing that’s being asserted is surprisingly easy to gloss over.

I began to work enthusiastically on answering all of these questions, except for the matter of whether the technique caused any kind of brain damage. On that score, as long as I was only experimenting on myself, I was willing to be optimistic.

Up until this point in the story, I haven’t said much about my circumstances at the time.

My name is Peter Ainsley. A year earlier I had graduated from a minor university with a degree in physics. My only uncle had died shortly before that, and he had been absolutely loaded. He had left me enough money in his will to live on for perhaps two years. So after graduating, rather than get a job, I had decided to just take some time to think about what I might do next, rather than having to jump immediately into something due to financial necessity.

After thinking about it, I’d figured out that if I moved somewhere cheap, I might make the money stretch out even three or four years. That seemed very appealing to me. I had thought I might write a novel. So I’d rented a cheap place in a small town, near enough to the coast that I could make a trip to the sea from time to time.

I knew no-one else in the area, but a sort of friend/acquaintance from university happened to be working in a large town about eight miles away. His name was Alan.

You can imagine that I badly wanted to share my discovery with someone, even though I didn’t, at that point, want to tell the whole world about it. One weekend Alan and I arranged to meet up for a drink and a chat, and after drinking a couple of beers I decided, somewhat impetuously, to tell him about it.

He was immediately intrigued, which quite surprised me. Although I knew Alan from university, he hadn’t studied physics; he was in another faculty entirely, studying economics, and he now had a job doing something financial, which I didn’t understand, at some small obscure firm that I wouldn’t otherwise have heard of, or so he said. He’d never shown any particular interest in science, but when I told him that I was working on a machine that could render a person unconscious, he wanted to know everything about it.

This didn’t seem all that strange, because after all, it really was fascinating discovery. Most people would probably have been fascinated by it.

Alan wanted to come to my house so I could demonstrate it to him.

The day after our conversation, I woke up and immediately regretted saying anything about it at all. Alan was too much of an unknown quantity. Somehow I didn’t quite fully trust him, but I couldn’t see any real harm in giving him a demonstration. It wasn’t like I was proposing to hand over the entire secret of how the machine worked to him.

I bought a plastic box for electronics projects off the internet and glued all the bits of the device inside it. I drilled holes for a variable resistor to set the strength of the pulse, for a push-button switch to activate it, and also a key switch so the device couldn’t be turned on without a key. Obviously it wasn’t very secure since anyone could just break it open and short the wires, but the point was to stop it going off accidentally. I also fixed up a green LED that blinked on when when the box was transmitting EM pulses.

I powered the whole thing with the biggest lithium battery I could fit in the box.

The whole thing was maybe half the size of a shoe box. I also bought an aluminium case for it so I could carry it around.

Why I did all this, I can’t really explain, except that I found the idea of packing the mechanism up like that very satisfying on an aesthetic level. Probably I was also thinking that I might have to take the machine somewhere to demonstrate it to people.

Alan came over a couple of days later. It’s strange, but when he rang the bell I had a bad feeling about it. It’s amazing the things I can find myself going through with out of embarrassment; perhaps it’s an English thing or perhaps I’m just weak, but at that moment I really wanted to tell him to go away. Instead, since he’d come all that way, I felt as though I really had no choice but to demonstrate the machine to him.

I invited him in. They say demons can’t enter a place unless they’re invited, or is that vampires? But I had no idea what he was capable of, at the time.

After I’d finished showing him the machine, he said, “So can I try it?”

“What, you want me to make you unconscious?” I said.

“Sure, why not? I mean, otherwise there could be anything in that box, for all I know.”

“I can’t be sure it doesn’t cause brain damage. I mean, I don’t think it does; I don’t see how it would, but then, at the moment I have no idea why it causes unconsciousness either.”

He clicked his fingers several times in various positions around my face, which was frankly extremely annoying, as if testing my reflexes, and said “You seem all right. I want to try it.”

I reluctantly agreed.

I had him lie down by the side of the box and it was only then that I realised it would have made more sense to build a timer into it, so you could push the button and retreat. The way I’d built it, you could only render yourself unconscious, not someone else. There was no way to even try it out on, for example, mice. I made a mental note to modify the thing.

“You’ll have to push the button yourself.” I said, inserting the key into the lock and turning it.

“What, this button here?” said Alan.

“Yes, that one.”

“Shall I press it now?”

“Let me get over to the other side of the room first.”

“The range is so long?” he asked.

“I’ve set the power low, so it won’t render anyone unconscious more than a metre away, but I’m afraid that repeated exposure to faint pulses might not be good for me.”

I took phone out of my pocket so I could set the stopwatch.

“I see.” he said. “Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.”

He pushed the button. I started the stopwatch on my phone.

I had actually been wondering if the machine would work on anyone else apart from me. I hadn’t tried it on anyone else. It was possible that it only worked on me because of some abnormal, or at least idiosyncratic, aspect of my brain structure.

So when Alan immediately fell under, I was actually quite relieved.

The box was configured to send pulses for about ten seconds, which by experiment I’d found to generally render me unconscious for about a minute. I hadn’t been able to find a way to shorten the period of unconsciousness; that was the shortest I could manage. Shorter pulses only created a sense of confusion.

It was interesting to observe the effect on Alan. For about forty seconds he seemed to have dropped into a deep sleep, with slow rhythmic breathing. Then at around the forty-second mark his breathing became more shallow, and almost exactly at the sixty-second mark, he opened his eyes.

For approximately fifteen seconds he seemed confused, and he said, “What’s going on?” in a slurred sleepy voice. Then he said, “Did it work?”

“It worked.” I told him.

“I’m not sure I was actually unconscious.” he said.

“You definitely were.” I said.

He refused to believe me, and we repeated the experiment, but this time I filmed him. While he was asleep, after the pulse train had completed, I ran over and slapped his face lightly and shouted “Alan!”

He didn’t react at all, but this time he opened his eyes around 55 seconds after activating the device.

This could have been due to chance, but it did seem to me that I myself was gradually developing a tolerance to the pulses. I hadn’t studied the thing well enough or made detailed enough observations to be sure, but I had already formed the impression that it was taking larger amounts of energy to put me to sleep for shorter periods of time.

Again he was confused, for about ten seconds this time, but soon he snapped out of it and said, excitedly, “Show me the video!”

When he saw it he was absolutely astonished.

He proceeded to rattle on excitedly about all the possibilities for nearly two hours, until I finally told him that I had work to do, and he left, but not before I’d again strongly emphasised that the project was secret, and that he shouldn’t tell anyone.

I sort of knew that Alan probably wasn’t going to keep it to himself, but I hoped my instructions would at least prevent him shouting about it from the rooftops. If he quietly told one or two friends then so be it; I couldn’t see what harm could come from that.

I wasn’t all that surprised when, a few days later, I received an email from a Dr. Ivan Luce in Italy somewhere. He said Alan had got in touch with him and that he had been researching methods of putting people to sleep using EM pulses—in other words, the exact same thing that I had discovered.

He suggested I write up the specifications of my device and go and visit him. He said he would demonstrate his research to me, and he suggested we submit a joint paper to a prestigious journal, as co-discoverers of the phenomenon.

I honestly don’t know why I wasn’t more suspicious. His email had the logo of a research institute on it. I checked and the institute existed, or at least it had an internet site, and he really did work there, and was apparently a legitimate researcher, and beyond that I made no attempt to verify anything he’d told me.

I could have asked him what frequencies he used or I could have given him silly information to test whether he’d spot that it was silly, but at that point I did neither of those things.

Instead, I told him I’d bring a working device to him and explain how it worked.

He told me he lived halfway up a mountain, and suggested I take a plane to Verona, where he would pick me up in his car. I checked the map and Verona was a couple of hours from where he said he lived, so I agreed. He said hotels were expensive round there and I could stay at his house for as long as I liked. I said I wouldn’t mind at all staying in a hotel, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He also didn’t want to meet me at the institute where he worked, because he said his research was purely a private thing, carried out at his house.

I’m not fond of staying in the houses of strangers, or even really friends, but I figured I could tolerate one night in someone’s house. I told him I was pretty busy but could manage one day. That way, I could get the plane back in the evening of the next day after I’d arrived.

A couple of days later, after booking a ticket, I put the machine in its little case, and I put the case in a suitcase together with a few necessities, and I made my way to the airport.

When I got off the plane at Verona, Ivan was waiting for me.

I knew I had made a mistake the second I set eyes on him. There was something about his appearance that set me on edge. I can’t say what it was, exactly. It was partly a matter of physiognomy. He didn’t have a trustworthy face.

Some people scoff at that kind of thing and argue that you should give everyone a chance, regardless of their face, but to me that’s idiotic. Some people look untrustworthy and I avoid those people whenever possible.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in a position to change my mind at that point. I suppose technically I could have made some excuse and got on the next plane home, but it wasn’t as if I thought him a serial murderer or anything. I just didn’t warm to him. So, like a lamb to the slaughter, I followed him to his car and got into it.

All the way to the tiny hamlet where he lived, he rattled on ceaselessly about all kinds of things—but aside from some pointed questions that he put to me, he avoided the topic at hand and he talked about his own research only in the vaguest of generalities.

We followed a motorway out of Verona for about an hour and a half, then got onto a more minor road. Soon we were driving upwards and upwards, my ears popping with the increasing altitude.

The ascent was like driving into another world, almost. I’ve always enjoyed the way the environment changes as you ascend mountains, but I was too on edge to properly enjoy it this time. In Verona the weather had been a bit chilly, but as we ascended we began to see more and more snow.

“It snowed a few weeks ago.” Ivan explained. “Still hasn’t completely melted. We don’t usually have much snow this early.”

Eventually his house came into view. It stood alone between flattish grassy fields, forming almost a plateau halfway up the mountain.

When I saw the house, a curious instinct, arising from where I don’t know, told me to run. I had to suppress an almost overwhelming desire to scamper off into the hills. I could find a village somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the little range of mountains, then a main road, and then a bus, and get the hell out of there.

But I didn’t do that. Instead, I let him usher me right into the house.

From the outside, I can’t say what it was that had bothered me. Perhaps only the isolation of the place. Inside, I began to think something was definitely wrong.

That old farmhouse just didn’t look like Ivan lived there. For example, on one of the walls was a collection of dolls, hanging from little hooks. No doubt they were some kind of local speciality, probably illustrating various forms of traditional dress, but Ivan didn’t strike me as the kind of man to take an interest in dolls, and he hadn’t mentioned any kind of wife or partner.

“Do sit down.” he said, waving at a sofa. “Do you have the device with you?”

“Yes, it’s here.” I said, patting the suitcase.

“Well, I’d love to see it.” he said.

I opened the suitcase and took out the inner aluminium case. This, I unlocked, and I placed the device on the table in front of us.

“Very simple controls.” he said.

“Yes, you just turn the key in the lock, set the power and press the button.” I said.

Everything was off, out of kilter, wrong. He was too eager, for a man who supposedly had already built such a device himself. Where was his own apparatus? I thought I’d better ask him.

“Where do you do your own work?” I said. “I’m anxious to see it.”

“In the cellar.” he said. “We’ll take a look shortly. First, you must try the local wine.”

He got up to go to the kitchen.

“There’s a little collection of dolls here.” I said. “Are they some sort of local thing?”

“Oh, those.” he replied. “The people who rented this house before me put them up. They’re nice enough so I’ve just left them there. Wait one second while I fetch the wine.”

His explanation was plausible. The bit that I found suspicious was that leaving those dolls up didn’t really fit with his character. They didn’t fit with his face, nor the fact that he was apparently a scientist. But I was in a foreign country, and for all I knew, northern Italian men of Ivan’s age regard collections of dolls pinned to the wall as completely normal.

By that stage I was completely paranoid and was trying hard not to let my fears run away with me.

He brought out a pair of wine glasses filled with white wine.

“This wine comes from the next valley.” he said. “You’ll never taste anything like it, I promise.”

For a second I was sure I saw a fleeting expression make its way unbidden across his face, like a brief dropping of a mask, and what I saw chilled me to my bones. There was real evil lurking behind that smiling facade. I was sure of it.

It also bothered me a lot that he’d poured the wine in the kitchen instead of opening the bottle in front of me and pouring it right there.

“Why don’t we take a look at your research?” I said. “Afterwards we’ll enjoy the wine. I can’t give the wine the attention it deserves while my curiosity is running wild.”

It was a desperate ploy, especially since I don’t even like wine, and it didn’t work.

“Oh, no!” he said. “First we must raise a toast to success. How do you say it in England? Cheers?”

“Yes, cheers.” I said.

“Cheers.” he said, and he clinked his glass against mine.

I took a minute sip of the wine. It tasted exactly like I’d imagine something would taste if it was poisoned, but then, as I’ve said, I don’t like wine anyway.

I was becoming desperate. I wondered what would happen if I simply packed up the device and left. Would he try to stop me? Something told me that he definitely would, and not in any kind of a way that I was going to find at all pleasant.

He was probably around sixty years of age, and strongly built. He was slightly shorter than me but I didn’t fancy my chances in a fight at all. Especially if he happened to have a weapon.

Now that I really began to examine him properly from that point of view, he didn’t really even look like he’d spent his life tweaking apparatus on laboratory benches. He looked more like ex-military. If someone had told me he’d trained in the Italian special forces and had then gone on to make a living as a mercenary overthrowing or possibly installing African dictators, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

Suddenly I found myself springing to my feet.

“So do these dolls illustrate various forms of traditional dress or something?” I said, walking briskly over to the dolls.

“I couldn’t really tell you much about them.” he said, not budging from where he sat.

“This one looks more Austrian than Italian, don’t you think?” I said.

“If you say so.” he said, with a horribly fake attempt at an amused smile. “Why don’t you sit down so we can discuss our work?”

I pretended to become intrigued by the stitching on one of the doll’s dresses.

“Incredible.” I said. “I’m sure it’s machine-stitched but it looks almost like they’ve tried to make it look hand-crafted.”

I had no idea what I was talking about. I just wanted him to get up and look at the dolls, because I wanted to try to get rid of the wine when he wasn’t looking.

“I’ve really no idea.” he said.

“Come and tell me what you think.” I said. “I won’t be able to relax till I’ve got to the bottom of it. I’m a bit autistic or obsessive, I suppose.”

“Really I don’t know.” he said.

“I’d really like your opinion on it.”

He sighed and got up from the sofa, and wandered over to look at the doll.

“Look, just there.” I said. “At the edge of the hem.”

Without turning around I deftly tipped the rest of the wine into the pot of a half-desiccated plant that stood by the window, coughing loudly as I did so to cover the noise.

I figured the ruse had a 50% chance of succeeding, and if he noticed I’d ditched the wine and blew his top about it, I was ready to run, even if I had to leave the device behind, in the worst case. I was completely sure Ivan was up to no good, and I was in danger.

He peered at the doll’s dress.

“I think it’s hand-stitched.” he said.

When he turned around to face me again, he saw me apparently finishing off the wine. I gulped conspicuously to try to further confirm the idea in his mind.

He seemed pleased that I’d apparently drunk the whole thing.

“Well, let’s get to work.” he said. “I’m interested to hear precisely how your machine works. Then we’ll go to my lab in the cellar.”

I went and sat down again on the sofa with him and began to feed him a load of nonsense. He nodded gravely.

I was beginning to feel fairly sure that he wasn’t a scientist at all. If he was, then he knew suprisingly little about electromagnetic fields.

I was babbling on, wondering how best to extract myself from the situation, rather hoping he’d go to the bathroom to spend a penny or something, when I saw a car drawing up outside the house.

Four men got out. They were entirely dressed in black and two of them had rifles.

I didn’t bother with any further pretence. I grabbed the machine and bolted for the back of the house, hoping to find a door or an open window.

“There’s no point running!” Ivan shouted after me. “You’ve just drunk enough ketamine to put a horse out.”

The back door was locked, but it was extremely flimsy. In a kind of adrenaline-fuelled delirium, I threw my whole body against it, and it broke clean off its rusty old hinges. Then I ran across the open field.

“Where are you going?” shouted Ivan behind me. “You can’t get away. There’s nowhere to go! In five minutes you’ll be asleep!”

I ran faster than I’ve ever run in my whole life. At the foot of the hills was a patch of trees, hardly enough to cover me, some of them having turned brown and dropped half their needles for the winter, but it was better than nothing.

As I was running into the trees I heard a soft thwack, and wood splintered off one of the trees. That was followed immediately, almost simultaneously, by the sound of a gunshot. The four men and Ivan were standing outside the house watching me, and one of them had his rifle pointed at me. They were trying to shoot me. I don’t know anything about guns but I suppose the bullet travelled faster than sound, so I heard it land fractionally before I heard the retort of the gun.

As I entered the trees they started off in pursuit.

The side of the mountain didn’t look very promising. The slope was steep but mostly still gentle enough to walk up and it was criss-crossed with tracks and old ski slopes, meaning anyone who knew the lie of the land would probably have no problem cutting me off. Here and there were patches of trees but not really big enough to lose myself in.

I ran up steep slopes with all the desperation of a man running for his life, listening to the cries of the men behind me. From time to time the gun went off, and once I’m sure I heard a bullet literally whistle by my head, but they couldn’t get a clear shot at me.

I once read somewhere that if someone’s shooting at you, you should weave from side to side so it’s more difficult for them to target you, and that’s what I did. This also helped with getting up the hill, but at the cost of slowing my progress.

After a while I saw clearly they were gaining on me. I had spent my life studying and sitting in cafes; they were clearly the sort of men who eat up assault courses. My chances didn’t seem good.

All the while I was trying to think of some way of using the device, which I still had in my hands, as a weapon. The problem was, I hadn’t got around to modifying it by fitting a timer. To activate it, I had to press the button, and that would render me unconscious along with anyone else in a radius of several metres, with the power dialled up to maximum. That is, assuming it even worked on everyone else, but it had worked on me and on Alan, so it probably would work on the nutcases who were pursuing me.

Alan! This was clearly his doing. I wondered whether he had actually known what he was getting me into, or had they deceived him too?

I was gasping for air and my legs were turning to jelly with the exertion of running up the hillside. My lungs were burning in the cold air. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep going.

I’d made it almost halfway to the top when a shout behind me caught my attention, and I realised they were almost upon me. I looked around desperately for somewhere to hide, but nowhere seemed suitable.

Then I spotted a structure standing tall at the edge of the patch of trees I was traversing. The mountain was littered with the remnants of a defunct ski resort, and the structure supported old rusting wires that had once formed a ski lift. A sign in Italian looked like it was probably telling people to jump off the lift. The structure was basically a tall metal pole with a ladder up the side and a platform at the top. If I got on the platform, it might protect me from bullets from below, and perhaps I could work out some way of deploying the device on my pursuers.

I don’t have much of a head for heights but I almost ran up the ladder like a cat. When I was climbing onto the platform at the top, a gun went off and a bullet bounced off a metal rail near my head.

I pulled myself onto the platform and lay there, ignoring their shouts, desperately trying to catch my breath. It seemed my remaining lifespan was likely to be numbered in minutes unless I thought of something quickly.

I took the key from my pocket and armed the device. All kinds of thoughts went through my head. Could I somehow drop the device so that it landed on the button? Could I open it up and somehow fix the wires from the power supply so they touched when the device landed below? Nothing seemed workable.

One of the men shouted up at me. He spoke good English, with a faint accent that didn’t sound Italian.

“There are two ways we can do this, Peter.” he said. “You can die quickly, like a man, from a bullet. Or, if we have to come up there and get you, we’ll make sure you suffer. You’ll die begging and crying.”

“Who are you?” I shouted down to them.

“We work for the government.” he said.

“Which government?”

At this, they laughed.

“That doesn’t matter.” shouted one of the other men.

I was still gasping for air, but a little less urgently than a minute earlier.

“Come and get me you worthless b******s.” I shouted down to them.

My voice was shaking and I don’t think I sounded too brave. They laughed again. One of them said, “OK” and he began to climb the ladder.

There was only one thing I could do. I would have to activate the device when he reached the top, but that would render both of us unconscious. If I were to crank it up to maximum power, it might even affect the men at the foot of the ladder, but then I’d probably be out for five minutes, so I didn’t dare to try it.

I half-wondered whether, were I to connect the output solenoids to the galvanised metal structure, I could transmit the pulses all the way to the people on the ground, but the idea didn’t really seem workable. The solenoids themselves generated the pulses—there were several of them and there was no antenna as such.

If only I had added a timer! I was about to lose my life just for lack of a 555 chip that might be had at the price of fifty for £5.

The man put his hands on the platform. He had a rifle strapped to his back. It was time to do or die.

Then I thought, why not just kick him off? I aimed a kick at his face but instead of dislodging him, I almost caught a bullet from one of his companions down below, and he only became enraged, shouting curses at me. I saw that he was about to haul himself onto the platform, so I did the only thing that would definitely work, and I pressed the button, holding the device as close to him and as far away from myself as possible.

My last thought before I pressed it, panicking, was that it was a shame I didn’t have a roll of aluminium foil. I could have wrapped my head in it, forming a Faraday cage, and protected myself from the device’s emanations completely.

The next thing I remember, I was sprawled out on the platform, dangerously close to falling off it, my head hanging over the edge. I hurriedly scrambled to a sitting position.

Down below an animated discussion seemed to be taking place. I peered over the edge, drawing my head back quickly before they could shoot at me, and in that brief moment I saw the body of the man who’d been climbing the ladder, sprawled out below, and the other men poring over him. One of them seemed to be taking his pulse.

As I sat there, wondering what to do next, one of them fired three bullets at the platform in quick succession. That made my heart race, but none of the bullets penetrated the thick steel struts of the platform.

“He’s dead!” shouted one of the men—the first one who had spoken to me, who seemed to be their leader. “Are you happy now? You’re next!”

He must have hit his head on a rock. Otherwise, the fall looked enough to break a leg, but not enough to kill someone. I can’t say I wasn’t pleased with this result.

In spite of the threats I could tell they were confused about what best to do. From where they stood, they couldn’t shoot me, and they also couldn’t risk climbing the ladder.

They stood around talking about it in a language I couldn’t understand for perhaps half an hour. I began to shiver convulsively.

Eventually one of them began to walk off.

“Don’t worry!” the leader shouted. “We’re going to fetch benzine so we can burn you off there!”

By benzine, I assume he meant petrol. Or at any rate, some flammable substance. I couldn’t imagine quite how they planned to set fire to a steel platform, but maybe if they packed wood around the ladder they could manage to kill me, or at least drive me off it.

“What if I give myself up?” I shouted down to the two remaining men.

They began talking animatedly to each other but said nothing in reply.

“I can tell you how the device works.” I shouted. “You want the device, don’t you? I can draw you detailed diagrams if you let me live.”

After a pause filled with more discussion, the leader shouted, “OK. It’s a deal. But throw the device down first.”

“No way.” I replied. “You’ll kill me. I’ll bring it down with me.”

“How do we know you won’t activate the device? You’ve killed Jurgen.”

A little smile came unbidden to my lips, even though I was shivering uncontrollably from fear and cold.

“If I activate the device, it’ll make me go to sleep as well as you.” I shouted. “It won’t do me any good.”

They discussed the matter a bit more, then the leader shouted, “OK. Come down.”

I stuffed the device underneath my sweater and began to descend the ladder. Either they would shoot me or they wouldn’t. I just wanted to get close enough to them to try one last desperate gambit.

They didn’t shoot. They watched me descend, the less senior man training his rifle on me.

When I reached the bottom and faced them, the leader said, “Where is the device?”

“Here.” I said, and I clapped my hand to my chest, pressing the button that activates the pulse.

I was counting on the tolerance I’d built up to the device’s effects.

When I awoke, to my enormous relief, the two men were still asleep. With trembling hands I grabbed the weapon off the subordinate. I had little idea how it worked, except I knew there was probably some kind of safety catch.

The leader began to wake up, groggily looking around, while I was still fiddling with the rifle, trying to figure out how it worked. I managed to slide something back and I pulled the trigger. A shot rang out and the leader fell back dead, with a hole in his head.

I was gawping at the sight of the man I had killed, simultaneously relieved and appalled, when the other man grabbed me around the waist. I hit him with the rifle. He fell back, and I turned around and shot him, twice.

The mood I was in after that was a terrible one. I had gone from a helpless sitting duck, waiting for death, to a victorious avenger. I no longer cared what I did, as long as I got home.

I’d got almost halfway down towards the farmhouse when I encountered the other man, running towards me. He must have somehow known something was wrong. When he saw me carrying the rifle, he visibly paled and pulled out a pistol from somewhere. He died before he could fire it, and I shot him twice more to be sure.

Why I went to the farmhouse, I can’t say, except that something evil had got into me. I walked straight in through the front door. The scientist, if that’s what he was, immediately tried to compose his face into a fake smile. Then he saw my gun and the rictus grin changed to a look of abject terror. Two seconds later he was dead, lying in a slowly-spreading pool of his own blood.

I collected my belongings, putting the device back in its case and the case back in the suitcase. Then I searched for and successfully located the keys to Ivan’s car. They were in his pocket.

I still had no idea who any of those people were, except that one of them posed as a scientist and there was a page about him on the website of what was supposedly a reputable institute. I had no idea whether the Italian government was involved in the whole thing, and I strongly suspected that these men were all employed by forces that transcended national boundaries, but I wasn’t going to take a risk with the airport. I drove north without stopping until, five hours later, I crossed into Austria.

I didn’t feel much like stopping in Austria either, and in the end I drove another twelve hours, all the way to Calais, fully expecting to hear police sirens behind me at any moment, but it never happened. If they had tried to stop me, I probably would have used the device again. I was absolutely paranoid, and not without reason.

At Calais I ditched the car and got on a ferry. No-one stopped me.

After I got home, which involved a long train journey, I had a drink to calm my nerves and fell asleep on my bed, fully clothed.

I met up with Alan just once after that. I went to his house, intending to sound him out, to try to figure out exactly who he had got in touch with, and how much he knew about what they had planned to do with me.

That turned out to be unnecessary. His face told me everything. Alan hadn’t expected me to return.

What kind of contacts he had, and how he’d acquired them, I have no idea. I’ll never know now, because a month later, Alan mysteriously fainted while driving on the motorway, and he died of his injuries two days later.

I have continued to work on the device, refining it. I no longer feel inclined to share it with the world. It’s too dangerous.

Perhaps I can find a use for it myself, who knows.

Fengor was nervous. The King’s summons was entirely unexpected, and indeed, unprecedented.

“There’s no need to worry, Fengor.” said Apla, Fengor’s wife. “He probably just wants to commend you on all your fantastic work over the years.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s it.” said Fengor.

He took a small metal case from his pocket, opened it, took out a seed and threw it into the air, catching it in his mouth.

“Fengor!” said Apla. “You’ve had too many jonga seeds already. How many’s that? Three?”

“I’ve got to calm myself down somehow.” said Fengor miserably.

“Just imagine how great you’ll feel tomorrow, when it’s over and done with.” said Apla.

Fengor made a disgruntled sound, hissing between nearly-closed lips.

He went to stand at the window.

The achievements of Xuvian science were indeed great.

Numerous ordinary Xuvians zig-zagged across the sky in their personal flying vehicles. In the distance, several villages floated on large flat rocks suspended in the air, vegetation and tree roots trailing downwards beneath. Only a century earlier, no Xuvian had ever left the ground, and now their mastery of gravity was complete. Fengor had detailed all of this in his book, How Xuvia Conquered the Sky; a book which he was now afraid to publish and which probably wouldn’t get published even if he were brave enough to send it to a publisher.

That night he slept badly, and several times got up during the night to eat more jonga seeds.

Fengor spent half the morning carefully preparing himself to meet the King. Apla helped him, carefully brushing and smoothing his robes until they were absolutely perfect.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” said Fengor gratefully.

“I don’t know either.” said Apla with a smile. “Just don’t take any nonsense from the King. Stand up for yourself.”

Fengor tried to smile, but his smile more resembled a grimace.

Finally, when the time arrived, they went to the attic and got in the flyer. Fengor’s hands were shaking so much that, even though he usually enjoyed flying, he had to ask Apla to take the controls.

After half an hour they landed on the King’s visitors’ landing pad. Soon, burly officials were escorting Fengor into the building, while Apla flew off to see the town.

Fengor felt as though he was being taken to his execution. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the King was somehow angry with him. For what, he didn’t know.

After making him wait for half an hour, finally they ushered Fengor into the King’s presence.

The King was an enormous man with a huge chin and an impressive beard. It seemed, then, slightly incongruous that he sat on an ordinary chair at an ordinary plastic table and invited Fengor to sit next to him. Nevertheless, this conspicuous act of egalitarianism did slightly put Fengor at ease.

“Fengor,” said the King, in a tone of voice that seemed perfectly friendly, “you might be wondering why I’ve asked you here to meet with me.”

“Yes, of course.” said Fengor.

The King placed his hands parallel and flat in the air in front of him, as if trying to find the best way to grasp an invisible object. After a pause, in which he apparently attempted to find the right words to approach a delicate subject, he said, “The thing is, right, it’s like this. Up until the unfair and discriminatory war with the Zorgons—I mean, Zongorians, whatever you prefer to call them, let’s not get hung up on that—thirty years ago, scientific research was progressing rapidly. You yourself performed vital work that furthered our understanding of gravity, when you were a young man.”

“Yes, that’s true.” said Fengor with a slight smile.

“The problem, Fengor, is nothing much seems to have happened since then. When I was a boy, we all believed we’d have machines that can think and talk by now, and yet, where are they?”

“Well, but there have been some significant advances, Your Majesty.” said Fengor with an ingratiating grin that again more resembled a grimace.

“True, true.” said the King. “Most recently, the discovery that the universe is hexagonal.”

“Exactly.” said Fengor.

“And, not long ago, the discovery that two plus two is not always equal to four.”

“Precisely.” said Fengor.

“Not long before that, we discovered that viruses can cause bigotry.”

“Just ten years ago,” Fengor dared to interject, “We discovered that Zorgons actually built the first cities in Xuvia.”

“Yes, yes, a wonderful discovery.” said the King. “However, Fengor, can you see what all these discoveries have in common?”

“Well …” said Fengor, slightly confused, “I suppose there is the fact that they were all made by Zorgons.”

“Yes, and that’s wonderful.” said the King. “The Zorgons have been oppressed for thousands of years and now we’re finally empowering them to make scientific discoveries. But they’ve got an uphill battle to fight, against Xuvian bigotry, which is rife in our society, and meanwhile, we still haven’t got machines that can think and talk, and Xuvian scientists, like yourself, with respect, have done almost nothing of any note since the war.”

“One’s doing one’s best.” Fengor protested.

“I’ll cut right to the point.” said the King. “I’m sorry, but you’re the head of Xuvian research and really, you’ve done little other than take Xuvian money, while Zorgons have been the only ones producing anything at all. You’ve really left me with no choice.”

“You’re not going to fire me?” said Fengor, aghast.

“I wish I could.” said the King. “Really, I do. No, I’m going to have to have you executed.”

“Executed?”

“Not only for your lack of progress. I’ve got a pile of complaints this high”—the King laid his hand flat above the table to indicate a very substantial pile of papers—“saying that you’ve expressed discriminatory views against Zorgons.”

“Never!” said Fengor. “On the contrary, I’ve listened to their endless tripe—”

“Oop!” said the King. “Kind of giving yourself away there, Fengor. Zorgon tripe? Sounds bigoted as Hell. Look, I’ve always personally liked you. I do have some sympathy for you, so what I’m going to do for you is, you’ll be executed by the fastest method we’ve devised. A sixty kilozarg rock will be dropped on you, flattening you instantly.”

“Your Majesty, I must protest!” said Fengor, and he rose angrily to his feet. He was so worked up, he hardly knew what he was saying or doing.

Two guards advanced threateningly on him, but the King motioned for them to return to their posts.

“Out with it.” said the King.

“Listen here.” said Fengor, so rattled that he no longer cared to speak with the proper amount of respect. “Before the war, everything was going brilliantly. I was brilliant, my colleagues were brilliant, everything was brilliant. Then you started staffing all our positions with Zorgons! Since then, we’ve been able to accomplish nothing of real value at all! It’s all nonsense, to be blunt. Hexagonal universe, two and two not equalling four—nonsense!”

The King paused, in a way that terrified Fengor into sitting down again. He put his head in his hands, elbows resting on the table. When the King spoke again, it was with a profound solemnity and gravity.

“Are you telling me that even the scientific discoveries of the past three decades are useless?”

“Yes!” said Fengor, looking up suddenly, wild-eyed. “That’s exactly what I’m now confessing!”

“Perhaps you’re just too old to appreciate Zorgon ways of thinking. You have to understand, Fengor, Xuvians have oppressed Zorgons for thousands of years. The wars were all our fault! I’m convinced of that. This last awful war was the final straw. The Z-weapon was too much. Yes, we won, but at what cost? So much suffering. So much devastation. We owe the Zorgons, and they’ve as much right to be scientists as anyone else.”

“The Zorgons have never been interested in science!” said Fengor. “They don’t even believe in truth! All they really care about is the greater glory of the Zorgon people! You talk about the right to be a scientist. I’m all in favour of that, but the playing field must be level. It’s not! You prioritise Zorgons. You make them into scientists even when they’ve no business being scientists. Right to be a scientist? But scientists are supposed to discover things! Being a scientist isn’t supposed to be a luxury! It’s supposed to require endless dedication and hard work. Instead of making Zorgons into respected scientists, you’ve destroyed the respect people formerly had for science.”

The King made a loud harumphing sound, indicating disagreement.

“Now you hang on a minute, Fengor!” he said. “If you’re saying Zorgons have destroyed science, explain how it is that science ground to a halt even before any Zorgon was a scientist!”

Fengor was silent.

“You have no answer.” said the King.

“No,” said Fengor, “I do have an answer. Right after the war, you brought in a load of Xuvians who also didn’t care about science. You over-expanded the universities. You turned them into businesses. The whole field of scientific endeavour is either about the pursuit of truth, or it’s about the pursuit of money and respect. It can’t be about both. Most really significant Xuvian discoveries were made when we had only perhaps twenty physicists in the entire world. Now we’ve got more than eighty thousand of them. The bad ones simply drag the good ones down.”

“You’re an old elitist fool,” said the King icily. “and I’ve heard quite enough. Guards, take him away.”

Two guards stepped forwards, grabbed Fengor and dragged him out through the door, protesting all the way.

To his surprise, instead of taking him to the dungeons, they took him to the landing pad. With a shaking hand, Fengor took his radio from his pocket and called Apla.

The following ten minutes were the longest of his entire life. He fully expected the guards to drag him away to the dungeons at any moment. Instead, Apla soon arrived, and a few moments later they were flying through the clouds, on their way home. Fengor was too shaken to speak, but once they arrived home and he’d thrown four jonga seeds into his mouth one after the other, he finally calmed down enough to explain to Apla what had happened.

“Do you think he make a mistake, letting you go?” said Apla.

“I don’t know.” said Fengor. “I don’t know if it was a mistake, or deliberate. Maybe we should flee.”

“Flee? But where to?”

“I don’t know.” said Fengor, putting his head in his hands again. “I don’t know. Oh, this is just awful!”

“Fengor,” said Apla gently, “don’t you think the King had a point?”

“A point?” said Fengor.

“I mean, maybe it’s not completely bad if science has stopped advancing. You know, the Z-weapon, and that whole thing where cutting off people’s legs was supposed to cure insanity, and the explosion at that chemical plant that wiped out Lower Luria. Science was getting a bit out of hand, don’t you think?”

“No!” said Fengor vehemently. Then he said, “Well, maybe, but all that happened at the end of the war, or just after it. That’s my point. We lost our moral compass. We ceased to dedicate ourselves to truth.”

They sat in silence for some moments. Then Apla said, “We could go to Zongoria.”

“Zongoria!” said Fengor incredulously. “The Zorgons hate us! Why would we go there?”

“It’s better than being executed.”

Fengor thought for a moment.

“That’s true.” he said. “And they’d never find us there.”

“We’d better go immediately.” said Apla.

“You’re right!” said Fengor. “Collect all the Ytterbium we’ve got. We can trade it.”

“There’s twenty cubes in the safe.” said Apla. “I’ll get it.”

“I’ll upload a fake flight plan.” said Fengor.

Less than an hour later they were on their way to Zongoria. Fengor had informed the authorities that they would be flying to a city near the border, named Ushira, to talk with a certain scientist there, whom he didn’t particularly like and in reality had no intention of meeting.

Instead, once above Ushira, they would simply keep going and cross into Zongoria.

Soon they were approaching the border, and the time would shortly arrive when they would have to make the final, utterly illegal step.

As they approached Ushira, Fengor said to Apla, “You know, you don’t have to come with me. I can still drop you off if you want.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” said Apla. “Of course I’m coming with you.”

They flew clean over Ushira and were mere minutes from the border when a Xuvian patrol ship latched onto them.

“We’ll have to land.” said Apla. “We can say we made a mistake.”

“No.” said Fengor. “I’ve got a little trick ready. I fixed something up years ago in case I should ever need it.”

The radio crackled into life.

“Flyer 23093.” said a voice. “Stop immediately. You are illegaly approaching the Zongorian border. You do not have permission to cross.”

Fengor ignored the voice.

“Flyer 23093, we will shoot you down unless you land immediately.” said the voice, after a pause.

Fengor hastily typed something into the ship’s console.

“They’re going to kill us, Fengor!” said Apla.

“No, they’re not.” said Fengor.

A minute later there was a bright flash as a missile shot past them.

“They can’t target us correctly.” Fengor explained. “I’ve effectively created an infra-red clone of us, slightly over the the right.”

“You’re a genius, Fengor!” said Apla, although she was still terrified.

“Perhaps.” said Fengor, modestly.

Their pursuer fired one missile after another, all of them going wide, and soon they were at the border.

“They can’t stop us now.” said Fengor.

But Fengor had spoken too soon. Their pursuer’s parting shot skimmed the right side of the ship, causing a shower of sparks inside the cabin.

Fengor swore and ran to the controls.

“It’s OK.” he said. “Only minor damage. But we’ll have to land.”

They landed on the side of a hill in Zongonia, flying over the heads of curious Zongorian farmers. Apla and Fengor ran out of the crippled ship coughing from the smoke they’d inhaled.

“What are we going to do now?” said Apla.

“I’ll tell them I’m a scientist and we’ll try to claim asylum.” said Fengor.

In the distance, a small group of astonished Zorgons were already making their way towards the ship.

“I say, what are you doing here?” one of them shouted, as he approached. “You’ve gone over the border.”

“We want to claim asylum.” said Fengor.

“Come with us.” said the man.

“What are you going to do with us?” said Fengor nervously.

“Take you to the king, of course.” said the man. “If you want to claim asylum you’ll have to talk to the king. By the way, my name’s Shagrath.”

“Pleased to meet you, Shagrath.” said Apla. “In Xuvia we’re told Zorgons hate Xuvians, but you seem very nice.”

“What rot.” said the man. “Of course I’m nice. Hospitality is a key aspect of our culture here in Zongoria.”

The other Zorgons were gathering around, watching them curiously.

Apla caught a woman’s eye, and she shouted, “Welcome to Zongoria!”

Another man shouted, “Can you help me get to Xuvia? I want to apply for a visa.”

“We’re fleeing Xuvia!” Fengor shouted in reply. “The King wants to kill me!”

At this a muttering went up among the assembled crowd.

“Pay no attention to them.” said Shagrath. “But why does the King want to kill you?”

“I’m—I was the head of scientific development and the King’s angry with our lack of progress.”

Shagrath laughed.

“Well, he shouldn’t keep giving jobs to Zorgons, then!” he said. “We’ve no interest in your Xuvian science!”

“That’s what I told him!” said Fengor.

Shagrath took them to a building built by Xuvian engineers. At three storeys, it was the tallest in all of Zongoria. Inside, Zorgons stood guard, carrying spears.

They made him wait in a room festooned with portraits of the King and his eighteen wives, before eventually ushering him into the King’s presence.

The King sat on an enormous throne, bedecked with jewels and gold.

“Fengor!” the Zongorian King boomed. “The head of Xuvian scientific development himself! What is your business here?”

“My wife and I would like to claim asylum.” said Fengor. “If possible. You see, our King wants to kill me for lack of progress in science.”

The King laughed heartily.

“He has staffed nearly all his scientific positions with Zorgons!” he said. “No wonder there’s no progress. You can’t feed sausages to a horse! We hate science! So boring. Always some annoying geek telling us whether we are right or wrong. That’s not the Zorgon way!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” said Fengor humbly. “Our own King can’t seem to grasp this.”

“Well, I tell you what, Fengor.” said the King. “I will grant asylum to you and your wife, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You will be the head of our new Zongorian scientific enterprise. We have received many other asylum-seekers from your land recently. You will hire them to work for you.”

“I gratefully accept, Your Majesty!” said Fengor.

—

Soon the King had Fengor installed in the second-tallest building in Zongoria, which was two storeys high. Fengor began to interview all the Xuvian asylum-seekers, but among them all he found only two who he thought might be any use: Rangor, a former student from Ushira, and best of all, Fleestor, a former scientist with whom Fengor had previously been acquainted.

“What does the King actually want us to do?” said Fleestor.

“I don’t know.” said Fengor. “I think I’d better ask him.”

Soon Fengor was standing once again in front of the King.

“Well, it’s very simple, Fengor old boy.” said the King. “I want you to build us a Z-weapon, so we can use it against the filthy Xuvians. I mean as a deterrent, of course. To wipe them off the map once and for all! If they attack us again, I mean.”

“Your Majesty, you’re asking me to build a weapon to be used against my own people. My mother is still alive. And I have uncles and aunts, and many friends …”

“My dear fellow, you’re a Zongorian now, aren’t you?” said the King. “I’ve granted you citizenship. Or do you want to go back to Xuvia?”

“No!” said Fengor. “They’ll kill me.”

The King leaned forward.

“Then build me a Z-weapon!” he roared.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” said Fengor meekly.

—

Back at the new research institute, in the two-storey building, Fengor discussed the matter with Rangor and Fleestor.

“Right, well we’d better build it, then.” said Fleestor.

“We can’t build a weapon against our own people!” said Fengor, horrified.

“What are you talking about? I’m Zongorian.”

“You’re not a Zorgon!”

“No.” said Fleestor. “And I’d thank you not to use that brutish term around me. I’m a Zongorian.”

Fleestor rummaged about in the pocket of his jacket and produced a passport.

“Read here.” he said. “Citizen of Zongor. Zongorian.”

“Dear Flarg!” said Fengor. “Have you no conscience? What about all your friends in Xuvia?”

“He did say it would be purely defensive, didn’t he?” said Fleestor. “Science is science. We’d better get right on it, or he’ll have our heads.”

“Rangor, what do you think?” said Fengor, turning to the former student.

“I—, well—” stuttered Rangor. “I mean, we work for the King of Zongoria now.”

“Moral imbeciles, the pair of you!” said Fengor angrily. “You’d sell your souls to the highest bidder!”

He stormed out in a rage. As he was storming out, Fleestor shouted after him, “I don’t believe in souls! Flarg is a human invention!”

At home, in the luxurious new hut the King had provided him with, he raised the subject with Apla.

“Seems like you have two choices, Fengor.” she said. “Start building it, but drag your feet, or else just build it.”

“If I drag my feet he’ll probably have me beheaded.” said Fengor, tearing his hair. “If I actually build it, that lunatic might destroy half of Xuvia!”

She laid a hand gently on his arm.

“He won’t use it.” she said. “He knows the Xuvians will retaliate. Let him have his stupid weapon. Do everything he says. Get into his good books. Then you can try to exert a calming influence on him afterwards.”

“I suppose.” said Fengor wretchedly.

And so, for the following two years, Fengor, Rangor and Fleestor worked patiently on the weapon. Vast Zongorian hordes were summoned to mine the necessary Praybium. An enormous refinery was built, becoming the tallest building in Zongoria; taller than the King’s castle—which bothered the King greatly, but he accepted that it couldn’t be done any other way.

Soon, inevitably, the weapon was ready. Fengor had tried endlessly to ingratiate himself with the King in the hope of becoming a restraining hand on the King’s ambition, with little success.

One day, the King’s guards arrived at their research centre. The most senior of them approached Fengor and said, “Ready the weapon for deployment against Zongoria’s enemies.”

“R-ready the weapon?” stammered Fengor, paling. “But there’s no war.”

“You’re a scientist, not a politician.” said the guard curtly. “Concern yourself with science, not politics. We will wait while the weapon is prepared.”

“It’s take two days!” Fengor protested.

“You will work until it’s done.” said the guard.

A day and a half later, the weapon was ready, and the guards took it away.

“I suppose they’ll blow up Xuvia now.” said Rangor ruefully.

“Blow up—you’re damn right they’ll blow up Xuvia.” said Fengor. “What are we going to do?”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry.” said Fleestor. “I made some adjustments.”

“What adjustments?” said Fengor.

“Adjustments.” said Fleestor, shrugging.

Fleestor began hurriedly taking items from a drawer and putting them in a suitcase.

“Where are you going?” said Fengor.

“As far away as possible. I suggest you do the same. Collect your wife. We’ve got about half an hour.”

“What have you done?”

“Only what I had to do. Honestly, I’m rather glad I’m old and will be dead soon anyway. Better put a step on it, if you want to save your wife. Don’t worry, I’m going to take all the blame. You were right about me, Fengor. I rather lost sight of what was important. I’ve straightened myself out now. I’ve rediscovered Flarg’s all-encompassing grace.”

Fengor ran immediately to the landing pad and flew home.

“Fengor, I’m bored.” said Apla, as soon as she saw him. “I’m tired of being at home all the time. Why won’t they let me do something useful?”

“Never mind about that!” said Fengor. “We have to leave.”

“What do you mean, never mind about it?” said Apla indignantly, stung by his tone. “It’s OK for you, Fengor. At least you—”

Fengor grabbed Apla and hurried her towards the landing pad.

“What’s got into you?” she said angrily.

Soon they were speeding away from the city, Apla still demanding to know what was going on, and Fengor afraid to say in case someone was somehow listening to them.

They had gone nearly a hundred kilokraiks when an enormous green flash exploded behind them.

Apla turned to look at it.

“Oh my Flarg!” she exclaimed.

“Don’t look at it.” said Fengor. “Bad for the eyes.”

Apla turned back to the front hurriedly.

“Where shall we go?” she said.

“Well, if we go to Xuvia, they might hail me as a hero, but then again the King might still kill me. If we stay here and they find out I helped make the bomb, they might kill me as a traitor or a spy. But they might not find out.”

Fengor thought silently for a while.

“Tell you what, let’s flip a coin.” he said.

However, that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was they had this tiny room where they dried the circuit boards after washing them in toluene.

“We’re planning to install a fan but we haven’t got one yet.” the guy told me on my interview.

One day a week each we had to stand in there performing various tasks with the circuit boards. So we were inhaling ridiculous amounts of toluene, which can eventually cause brain damage if you inhale it in large enough amounts.

I only lasted two months in that job. The toluene made me feel sick and dizzy.

The reason I mention it is, there was a man there by the name of Godfrey. Why his parents called him Godfrey, I have no idea, but I gathered they were posh. You can’t even shortened it easily, but he told me people call him Goff, which still sounded ridiculous.

“Why are you doing this job?” I said to him one day. “You’re wasted here.”

Goff had a brain like a planet and was always talking about things he was trying to invent.

“Another six months and I’ll stop.” he said. “I want to save up for some parts I need.”

“Can’t your folks help you?”

“My father’s in prison and my mother’s in a mental hospital so it seems unlikely.”

“Your father’s in prison?” I said, feeling perhaps it was best to lightly skip over the subject of his unfortunate mother. “What for?”

“He poisoned someone he didn’t like.”

They say there’s a fine line between genius and madness, and I wasn’t completely sure which side of it Goff was on, but it was clear his parents were on the wrong side altogether.

He was a little weird and his family even weirder, but I liked Goff nonetheless. His entire life seemed to be devoted to his inventions, to a ridiculous extent, because he would have had more money to spend on his private research if he’d devoted some time to actually making money, instead of taking rubbish jobs whenever he needed money.

My excuse was, I was between proper jobs.

Goff invited me to come and see what he was working on. That was a chance I wasn’t going to pass up.

In spite of the current situation of his parents, it seemed they’d made a tidy packet while still able to work, and he lived in their house, which was a beautiful old renovated farmhouse in a village on the edge of town. He had dedicated an extensive cellar entirely to his experiments.

“This is my masterpiece.” he said, waving at a large metal cube, reaching nearly to the ceiling.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a dark box.” he replied. “It’s supplied with fresh air via a system I devised—” he indicated a series of pipes going into the cabinet, stuck to one side of it “—but it keeps out just about one-hundred-percent of ambient light.”

“Not wishing to be obtuse, but what’s the point of that?”

“You see, many ordinary processes emit photons, too weak for the eye to see, even in darkness. Ordinary human bodily processes, for example. Metabolic processes. Inside this chamber are a set of extremely sensitive photomultipliers. They can detect even individual photons. Let’s say you’ve got a tumour, for instance. The tumour may emit characteristic photons, and using this device I can potentially build up an image of it.

“My hypothesis is that such a tumour might be destroyed by bombarding the body externally with photons of the same precise frequencies that it emits.”

“Have you … tested the idea in any way?” I asked, privately thinking his hypothesis sounded pretty silly.

“Sort of.” he said. “Anyway, I’ve got something rather interesting set up in there right now. Come and see.”

He unfastened some catches and one entire face of the cube swung open. Inside, at the far end, was some kind of apparatus set up on a trestle. It included what seemed to be a vial of water, with various electrical devices positioned around it.

“Is there enough space in there for both of us?” I asked him.

“Of course.” he said.

“Honestly, it looks a bit claustrophobic.”

“You can get out any time you want. Come!”

He went into the cube and beckoned me.

Rather reluctantly, I followed him in. He pulled the door closed behind us, so we were sealed entirely in the cube.

“I can’t see a damn thing in here!” I said.

“Exactly.” he replied.

But then I did see something: a couple of little blue flashes.

“What was that?” I asked, feeling rather alarmed.

“Just static. Ordinarily, to examine the human body, one has to wear special clothing to eliminate them, and I humidify the air, which helps a lot. They’re too bright for the photo sensors and they just make a mess of everything. But they don’t matter for our purposes at the moment.”

“What are our purposes, exactly?”

“First, sit tight while I set the apparatus up. Your eyes need to adjust. It’ll take about fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes?” I said incredulously. “I can’t stand fifteen minutes in here! We’ll suffocate!”

“No, no.” he said. “I told you, there’s a machine pumping in fresh air. “You’ll be fine. You can sit down if you like.”

“But how are you going to set your stuff up in the dark?”

“I’ve trained myself to do it by touch alone.”

And so I sat there in a corner of the cube while he tinkered with something in the pitch-black darkness.

After a while I said to him, “I can see something. Weird patterns.”

“That’s just your brain playing tricks on you. When the retinas receive no stimulation, the brain starts inventing stuff. If you were to spend a few hours in here you’d start hallucinating wildly.”

“Oh, crikey.” I said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be out of here in half an hour at the most.”

I began to find the little flashes and spiral patterns quite interesting, once I’d got over my initial reservations. I wasn’t sure which were caused by static and which were purely in my mind, but I figured I could stick half an hour in the interests of getting to see something that would hopefully be rather unique.

After some time—perhaps fifteen minutes—he said, “It’s ready. Stand up.”

I stood up, keeping my hand on the side of the enclosure.

“Look here.” he said.

“Where?”

He took my arm and pulled me slightly over towards the middle of the cube. Then, feeling for my head, he positioned it at a point that I guessed to be directly in front of the glass vial.

“Watch.” he said.

“I don’t see anything.” I told him.

But then I saw it: a tiny, rather beautiful point of light, glowing white in the darkness.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s called sonoluminescence.” he replied. “I’ve created an ultrasonic standing wave in the water in the vial. For unknown reasons, this causes the water to emit light.”

“Amazing.” I said. “Why does it happen?”

“There are various theories but no-one’s sure.” he said.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t it? It’s as if I’ve caught a star in a bottle.”

I watched it quietly for a bit, then I said, “Is it any use for anything?”

“I’ve been analysing the light with my photomultipliers. I think I’ve detected something extremely unusual.”

“What?”

“Helium.”

“Is there helium in the water?”

“No, that’s the amazing thing. The only way there could be helium in there is if two hydrogen atoms have fused together. A nuclear reaction.”

Goff switched into lecture mode, as he was prone to do.

“You see, helium was first discovered on the sun, not on Earth. When gasses are excited by electricity or extreme heat or some other form of energy, they emit very specific frequencies of light, and that’s how helium was first discovered: by observing light from the sun. Then later on they found it in some rocks thrown out by Vesuvius. I’ve detected it via the same method, in pure water undergoing sonoluminescence.”

“Isn’t it possible the water had helium in it to start with? Trace amounts?”

“No. I’ve purified it with incredible care, and there are no gasses dissolved in it. Do you see? This could form the basis of a new form of nuclear energy.”

He rattled on for a bit about helium and nuclear reactions. I didn’t understand much of it but it was interesting to hear him talk. I suppose enthusiasm is always contagious. It did seem as though he’d really discovered something new and quite exciting.

When we were leaving the box and he was swinging the door open, he said, “I need to make the star bigger and more powerful. Then maybe I’ll be able to figure out exactly what’s happening.”

“How will you do it?”

“I have some ideas involving magnetic fields.”

The light in the cellar, which was relatively dim, seemed almost blinding after half an hour in the cube.

Once our eyes had adjusted again, we went upstairs and sat in the kitchen, around the little table there.

“I’ll make us a tea.” he said.

I noticed there was a photograph on a shelf of a rather attractive girl.

“Who’s that?” I asked, expecting him to say that it was his sister—although he’d never mentioned any sister—or perhaps his mother when she was young.

“Oh, that’s Abigail.” he said. “She was my fiancé.”

That was the first time Goff had ever mentioned any fiancé. I had always assumed he was so focused on science that he had no time for women. In fact, I couldn’t imagine how he could possibly have found the time to have a fiancé.

“What happened to her?” I asked him.

He stopped what he was doing and smiled sadly, a pained expression on his face.

“She died.” he said.

“I’m so sorry to hear.”

“Well, it wasn’t your fault. She developed a tumour on her kidney. That’s why I got interested in the photons emitted by metabolic processes. I thought I could help her.”

“But you couldn’t.”

He shook his head, staring down at the floor. I had the impression he was holding back tears.

“I’m sorry, Goff.” I said gently. “You’re not superhuman. You can’t fix every problem.”

“True.” he said, with a sigh, and he resumed making tea.

—

Goff didn’t see through his proposed six months in our crummy job. He left soon after that. For a while I didn’t hear from him very much. I quit myself a couple of months later and took other some soul-destroying job involving spreadsheets, but at least it paid well and didn’t mess up my health.

Then he emailed me out of the blue and asked if I’d like to meet up with him, because he wanted to tell me what he was working on now. That was Goff all over. No superfluous enquiries about my health or happiness; he just wanted to tell me about his research.

I suggested we meet in a cafe in town, and I told him I’d like to pay, to celebrate my new job. The actual reason I wanted to pay was because I knew he didn’t have any money, but I wanted to spare his feelings.

When he turned up at the cafe, he looked like he was skimping on the washing a bit. His sandy-coloured hair seemed unusually lank, and he was even paler than previously.

“I’ve discovered something incredible.” were the very first words out of his mouth, as he marched up to the table where I was already sitting, nibbling on a croissant that tasted like it had passed several uncertain days behind the counter.

“You can tell me all about it.” I said. “I’ll get us some coffee first. What are you having?”

He seemed like he was going to argue with me, but then he said “Yes, OK.”, apparently accepting the necessity of the coffee, and he added, “Black. No milk or sugar.”

But I knew Goff was just trying to save money, was afraid he’d end up paying, and was, in reality, a sucker for the fancy lattes, so I got him one of those instead.

He started up again almost as soon as I’d sat down.

“I’ve detected anomalous radiation.” he said excitedly. “Spectra of foreign substances!”

“Do you have a new job?” I asked.

“No. I can’t spare the time anymore.”

“Are you eating properly and stuff?”

“Never mind about that!” he said, as though I ought to understand that him eating was of little or no consequence. “Listen, I’ve thought about it and I want to show you the new machine. There is some danger, but probably no worse than the danger of inhaling toluene one day a week.”

“I told you, I’ve left that job, same as you. I work in an office now.”

“I’ll try to explain. Have you got a car? I’ve detected actual spectra of elements that don’t exist in any quantity on the Earth. We can take the bus if necessary.”

“Will you please calm down!” I said to him. “Start at the beginning.”

As it happened my car was in a nearby car park and he insisted I drive straight to his house, although I insisted we finish our coffees first. He gulped his down, ignoring to the heat, and waited impatiently while I finished mine.

All the way to his house he rattled on about “parallel spatial coherence” and “inverse temporal manifolds” and what-not.

Once at his house he practically dragged me straight down to the cellar. Only when we were standing in front of the cube did he force himself to calm down.

“There is risk.” he said. “I can’t deny that there may be some risk. Are you willing to accept the danger in order to witness the greatest scientific innovation of our time?”

“You’ve witnessed it yourself, haven’t you?”

“Many times, now.”

“You seem to be in one piece. Will we get exposed to radiation or something?”

“It’s possible.” he said. “But probably not.”

I took a deep breath.

“OK then, let’s give it a shot.”

We went into the cube and I was relieved to find he’d fixed a purple light in there this time.

“Watch.” he said, and he began to fiddle with some kind of apparatus, this time consisting of a large cylindrical tank with wires and other things around it.

“Don’t we need the light off?” I asked him.

“No, it’s clearly visible now.” he said.

As I watched, a bright star-like object began to appear in the middle of the cylinder. It grew and grew, until it was dazzlingly bright. It was accompanied by a loud crackling, fizzing sound.

“My God!” I said. “Is this the same thing as before? It’s huge!”

“It’s the same thing via a different technique.” he replied. “But here’s the thing: I’m detecting light from it that’s characteristic of a star. Maybe I can even figure out which star.”

I turned to him, shocked.

“What are you saying? It’s some kind of portal?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” he replied. “It’s bending space, transferring light here from who-knows-where. Perhaps even a distant galaxy.”

“You’re sure?”

“No doubt about it. The chances of producing this exact kind of a spectrum by coincidence somehow are infinitesimally small.”

“Could it be light from our own sun?”

“Nope. Spectrum doesn’t match. It’s from some other star entirely.”

He flicked a switch and the light abruptly vanished, leaving me almost unable to see in the dim light, so bright was the after-image.

We talked excitedly for a while. He explained the apparatus to me, although I didn’t understand much of what he said. We were still discussing the possibilities as we exited the cube.

“Imagine!” he said. “I may be able to turn this entire enclosure into a kind of matter transference device.”

“Do you really think that’s possible?”

“Entirely possible. The thing is, Joe, I need funds. I remortgaged the house but I’ve spent most of that now.”

“Surely if you tell people about this, the funding will flood in.” I said.

“Probably, but I really want to keep this to myself for a while, just until I’ve figured out exactly what’s going on.”

“You’re completely sure you’re getting light from a distant star?”

“Completely sure.”

“I could loan you maybe a grand a month, plus ten grand up front from my savings. You can pay it back when you’re rich and famous.”

“Would you?” he said eagerly.

“Sure.” I said. “If this is really what you say it is, I’ll have the honour of funding one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history. Will it be enough?”

“It will.” he said.

“How long do you think it’ll be before you’re ready to tell the world about it?”

“Six months.” he said. “That’s all I need.”

I dutifully transferred ten thousand pounds—all of my savings—to him, and began stumping up a thousand quid a month. I could barely afford it and I’d been hoping to put a deposit down on a tiny flat somewhere, but it seemed like the circumstances called for sacrifice.

As I left I noticed another photograph of the pretty young woman, this time on the mantelpiece in the living room.

Poor Goff, I thought. That must have been hard. But sometimes, it takes a tragedy to make a genius, probably. At least, there must many instances of it in history. Edgar Allan Poe lost his wife before writing his stories while descending into alcoholism and paranoia, Mary Shelley lost her first child before writing Frankenstein, Van Gogh did arguably his best work in an asylum, and so on. Doubtless there are instances one could cite from the scientific world also.

About two months later, during which time Goff was reporting steady progress, although he didn’t feel ready to give me another demonstration, something happened that really changed my perspective quite a bit.

I was walking in town with no particular aim, but heading in the general direction of my favourite cafe, the one where I’d met up with Goff, when a woman caught my eye. Not just any woman: this woman distinctly resembled the one in Goff’s photographs.

I was so gobsmacked that she walked clean past me before I could say anything. I turned and, raising my voice a little so she’d hear me above the noise of the crowd, I said, “Hey, do you know Goff?”

I half-expected her to assume I was addressing someone else, the resemblance being purely incidental, but instead she froze, and turned around slowly. Then she walked right up to me and said, curiously but not very enthusiastically, “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of Goff’s.” I said. “It’s just, he has photographs of you all over his house and he told me you’d died.”

A surprised expression appeared on her face and she laughed.

“That’s absolutely typical.” she said. “What else did he say?”

“He said you’d developed cancer and he’d tried to cure you but he’d failed, and you died.”

She was clearly amused.

“He just can’t bear the fact that I left him.” she said. “Seems like he’d rather think I was dead. Goff’s not right in the head. You might want to reconsider the company you keep.”

“It’s all a lie?” I said, horrified.

“I did have a tumour. The doctors cured me. It wasn’t malignant. Goff made me stand in his stupid machine in the dark for hours on end and it did nothing useful at all. Surgery fixed it.”

“Good God.” I said.

“So what’s he up to now?” she asked. “Not that I really care.”

I started telling her about Goff’s alleged spacetime portal. Goff wanted it kept quiet but I felt he’d forfeited the right to his secret, in view of the facts that he’d lied to me about something quite major and I’d given him twelve thousand pounds by then.

I asked her if she’d like to get a coffee with me at the cafe, and she agreed.

We talked a lot about Goff’s research, and whether Goff could really be trusted or not. Neither of us really knew. Was this particular lie one big astonishing exception, or was Goff, in fact, a habitual liar? Even she didn’t know.

“Is it true that you were his fiancé?” I asked her.

She spluttered slightly.

“For all of about a week.” she said. “I realised I’d made a mistake almost immediately.”

“Why did you leave him?”

“Goff doesn’t have time for anything or anyone but his research.” she said. “I barely actually saw him, the whole time we were supposed to be together.”

I don’t quite know how it happened but somehow, I ended up seeing her myself. I mean, dating, as the Americans say. We had a similar sense of humour and it seemed we might also both have one other thing in common: some lunatic, namely Goff, was giving us the runaround.

Of course I knew this would be devastating to Goff if he found out, but he’d lied to me, even though I was paying for his research, so I didn’t care all that much.

Several weeks went by, then Goff sent me an email asking me for more money. I told Abi I was going to his house to discuss it with him.

“I’ll come with you.” she said.

“Now that’s hardly a good idea, is it?” I said to her.

“Why not?” she said, bristling. “He’s been telling people I’m dead. I want to confront him.”

I tried to persuade her to let sleeping dogs lie but she was obdurate.

—

And so it was that we turned up at Goff’s house together. I rang the doorbell and Goff appeared.

When he saw Abi he turned pale.

“What’s this?” he said, faintly.

“I need to have a word with you, Goff.” she said, icily.

“So do I.” I said, a little more kindly.

He gawped at us like a frozen fish but then arrived at a decision and said, “Come in then.”

Inside, we started interrogating him about his behaviour.

“I’m sorry.” he said, mainly to Abi but glancing at me too. “It’s not that I wanted to tell people you’d died. It was just quicker than explaining the whole thing. I didn’t want to get into it.”

“You can’t expect me to be stumping up your research funding when you’re not honest with me.” I said. “How do I know you’re not lying to me about the research as well?”

He seemed to cheer up suddenly, and a strange light appeared in his eyes.

“Actually I’ve got something to show you.” he said. “Come down to the cellar.”

We went down to the cellar, Goff leading the way. The door to the cube was open.

“Watch this.” he said, and he began fiddling with the machine inside the cube. As he worked, he began to explain.

“I figured out what determines the range and trajectory of the device.” he said. “I hooked it up to a computer and had it scan trillions of locations, searching for certain specific spectra. And I’ve enlarged it. Massively. I’ve found something quite remarkable.”

“What?” said Abi, somewhat nervously.

“Prepare yourselves.” he said, dramatically. “You’re about to witness the greatest scientific discovery ever made.”

He pulled a lever and the far wall of the cube—the entire wall—seemed to shimmer and dissolve, to be replaced by a picture of a forest, with bits of the apparatus still standing in front of it. At least, I thought it was a picture of a forest.

Goff stepped forward, and walked clean into the picture.

“It’s a hyperspace portal.” he said. “I’m now standing on another planet.”

For some moments, neither Abi nor I were able to speak. We were absolutely astonished, as you might imagine.

It was Abi who spoke first.

“It looks like somewhere here on Earth.” she said.

“Convergent evolution.” Goff replied, expansively stretching out his hands, palms facing us, as though he was the architect of a whole new planet, showing us his creation.

“Convergent evolution?” I said.

“Yes.” said Goff. “Look.”

He plucked a leaf from a nearby tree and held it up.

“It looks like a leaf. It is a leaf. But this particular leaf is not found anywhere on Earth.”

The leaf he held was curiously veiny, with four spiked tips. Indeed it didn’t look like any leaf I had ever seen, but then, I haven’t seen all that many leaves in the great scheme of things.

“It’s incredible, Goff.” I said. “You’re a genius.”

He smiled broadly. But then something caught our attention behind him. A vast shape was rapidly making its way through the trees towards us.

Goff saw the expressions on our faces and spun around.

He froze in horror.

“Goff!” I said, “Get back in here!”

But he didn’t respond.

The thing, whatever it was, was huge and covered in thick hair. I couldn’t properly make it out, and I couldn’t see a face or any eyes. But then it roared, making a deafening noise, and I saw something that distinctly resembled the spiky teeth of a shark, except they were arranged in a wide circle with a dark red interior.

I ran forward to pull Goff back inside, but as I did so, I tripped over a cable and instead of running onto the surface of Goff’s planet, I came up short against the interior far side of the cube, smacking my head painfully. I had disconnected something, and the portal had disappeared in the blink of an eye.

“Are you all right? Get it back!” said Abi wildly. “We have to switch it on again.”

We reconnected the cable, which had simply become unplugged from a socket at one side of the cube, but nothing happened. We fiddled with the levers and switches, desperately attempting to reactivate the portal.

Nothing worked.

After two hours I fell back against the side of the cube, despairing, and slid to a sitting position.

“It’s no good.” I said. “We’ve no idea what we’re doing. We’ll have to get some actual scientists in here.”

“We can’t do that!” Abi protested. “They’ll just think we’re fantasists. If they believe us at all, they’ll bundle this thing away in some government facility and we’ll never be able to get Goff back!”

I groaned and put my head in my hands.

She was right.

I thought it best to refrain from mentioning the distinct possibility that Goff had now been eaten by an alien forest creature.

Pulling myself together, I looked at her and said, “Then we’ll have to figure it out ourselves.”

—

That was five years ago.

We transferred the apparatus to a warehouse, before anyone could realise Goff was missing. When people did realise he’d gone missing, which wasn’t until two months later, the police interrogated us thoroughly as the last people to see him alive, but of course we had to feign ignorance, since they never would have believed us anyway, and they gave up pursuing us pretty quickly.

Since then we’ve made progress and we understand some of what Goff’s apparatus does, but we still fundamentally don’t understand how it works.

We haven’t been able to reactivate the portal.

By then, Mars had been substantially terraformed. The atmosphere was breathable and much of the planet was covered in moss, grass, or even trees.

Financially, I was in a bit of a hole, and I thought a Mars trip could get me out of it. I first got the idea when my friend Petra introduced me to some astronauts she happened to know. By coincidence they happened to be at a bar where we were enjoying a quiet drink. They invited us to sit with them.

Honestly, I’m not very sociable and I would rather have carried on just talking to Petra, but once they began to talk about their work I realised there was an opportunity to be had there.

People went to stay on Mars for two years at a time. The pay was pretty good, and you could save more or less all of it, because everyone ate together in a primitive canteen and there weren’t any shops. If I spent two years there I’d come back 80,000 credits richer.

80,000 credits would get me out of my problems. As things were, I was seriously thinking of buying a tent and trying to live in that. Being stuck on Mars with a bunch of people I didn’t know, wasn’t really appealing, but it would probably be better than living in a tent.

The work seemed to mainly involve taking readings at various locations and repairing machinery. I have some basic qualifications in electronics, so I would be eligible for a stint on Mars.

The astronauts themselves seemed a jolly enough bunch. They all had beards—apparently shaving on Mars was considered unnecessary for some reason—and they all seemed pretty knowledgeable.

There weren’t any women among them. They government had been trying endlessly to get women to go to Mars, but without much success. The few who did go came back with reports of rather primitive conditions, and an unsettlingly-male atmosphere.

I had no living relatives that I was actually in touch with aside from my grandfather. He spent his time in an isolated cottage in the countryside, tinkering with scientific apparatus. I visited him every few months. I would miss him, but hopefully he’d still be alive when I got back.

My grandfather was as thin as a rake and completely obsessed with science. In his youth he’d enjoyed a promising career as an academic, but that had somehow fizzled out and he’d ended up practically a hermit.

The last time I visited him before I left, he advised me not to go.

“There’s really nothing there.” he said. “It’s like Siberia but worse. The weather’s terrible and you’ll spend most of your time holed up in a tiny room, if you even get your own room. Anyway, rockets are a primitive and dangerous technology.”

“We get our own rooms.” I told him.

“Well, that’s something.” he said. “Look, Mars colonisation will happen eventually, but not with current technology. We’ve tried to do it too early. We should be waiting till something better comes along than rockets.”

“Such as?”

He tapped the side of his nose knowingly.

“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.” he said, laughing.

I loved my grandfather, but he did have a habit of getting weirdly cryptic, which was quite annoying. It didn’t help that he hardly talked to anyone apart from me. Lack of socialisation was only making him weirder as the years passed.

“Surely you’d have to admit that the terraforming has been an astonishing success?”

“A bit of moss. A few trees for show.” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s got a breathable atmosphere!” I protested.

“So they claim.” he said.

“What, you don’t believe them?”

He got up to make a cup of tea, and he clapped me on the back.

“You’ll be able to tell me yourself in a couple of years,” he said. “if you’re mad enough to go through with it and you refuse to listen to my advice.”

Two weeks later I was sitting strapped into a seat perched on top of a rocket, together with three other people, my heart beating uncomfortably fast with anxiety. About one in a thousand of those rockets simply blew up before reaching space.

As for the three other volunteers, there was Aron, who was originally from Hungary but had lived for many years in the UK, Noah, who was English, and, surprisingly, Sofia from Italy.

Noah was a seasoned astronaut, used to leading expeditions. Aron was a civilian volunteer like myself, and understood seemingly everything about computers. Sofia was another volunteer, and had a doctorate in plant biology, which, needless to say, could be very useful on Mars.

When the rocket ignited I felt a tremendous force on my back. In videos it looks like rockets accelerate very slowly, but from nearly the outset I felt as though I was being crushed.

“Deep breaths, everyone.” said Noah through the intercom.

At every moment I felt as though I might be about to die. Lots of people already had, during ascent, after all.

It was nearly eight minutes before the pressure lightened up, and I felt an enormous sense of relief.

Soon the pressure disappeared completely and we were weightless. I’d say that was fun, but it wasn’t. We were trapped in a small capsule anyway, until we docked with the space station, so we couldn’t just float freely around. We docked three hours later.

Onboard the space station there were already three astronauts who were shortly returning home, after having spent two years on Mars. They were: Ronan Whitlock, Felix Trevellick and David Harrington.

David looked sick as a pike. I asked him what Mars had been like. I gathered this had been his first trip there.

“Imagine Milton Keynes but even worse and with less traffic.” he said dryly.

Apart from that, I couldn’t get much out of him.

Twelve hours later we were in the interplanetary module heading towards Mars, a steady acceleration providing three-quarters of Earth’s gravity.

It took only a week to get to Mars, thanks to the extraordinary speeds we reached. Noah was pretty busy the whole time. The rest of us didn’t really have much to do. They kept us busy with silly tasks like wading through computer courses about Mars.

When we finally stepped out onto the Martian surface, shaky and nauseated from the journey down through the atmosphere, I finally felt as though I had made the right decision and it had all been worth it.

Thanks to the vast quantities of nitrogen brought over from Titan, the sky was a beautiful deep blue, and the green plains extended almost as far as the eye could see, ending in vast mountains. The gravity is only a third of what we experience on Earth; there was no way of fixing that, and I felt as light as a feather.

We would have to take pills all the time we were there and do special exercises to prevent bone mineral loss, but I felt like that was going to be a small price to pay for being able to walk practically without effort, and jump three times as high as on the Earth. I found I could sort of skip along the surface as though half-able to fly, my feet no longer dragged downwards by gravity to quite the usual degree.

However, the accommodation was a let-down. I’d have to give that two stars at best. The Mars base was hardly better than an ugly ramshackle tin hut.

“It’s not always going to be like this.” said Noah, gesturing at the blue sky. “There’s weather here that no human can stand without shelter.”

“It’s beautiful.” said Sofia, which was unusual for her, because she’d been pretty down-to-Earth and serious for the whole of the past week.

Aron said, “Looks like Mongolia. Interesting.”

I’ve never been to Mongolia but I suppose it must be flat and grassy.

In the base itself were three other residents, who were due to go home in a year. Mateo Rossi was American, in spite of the Italian name, and specialised in food production. Luke Watson was another fellow Englishman and a mechanic. He had the typical demeanour of the mechanic. If you’ve met any, you know what I mean. You could tell he was a mechanic just by looking at him. He was the kind of person you need to have around if anything mechanical is going to break down.

Theo Andersson was actually Dutch and had overall responsibility for managing the base. I liked him immediately. He was tall as God and had that fair-minded practical demeanour that’s often found in Dutch people.

The annoying thing was, we had one guy called Theo and another guy called Mateo, which would end up meaning that whenever you shouted for one of them, the other guy would think you wanted him. I suppose whoever plans these things didn’t think of that. It was to turn out that there were quite a lot of things they hadn’t thought of.

The base itself was surprisingly primitive. Or maybe that’s the wrong word: it was only primitive from the perspective of conventional architecture. It had been designed by scientists, after all, with little interest in aesthetics. It was made of the latest materials but the ceilings were too low and it was impossible to escape the feeling of being stuck in a massive box.

They set me to work repairing a bunch of things that had gone wrong, but it was a bit of a farce. I hadn’t got half the tools and parts that I needed. As time went by it gradually dawned on me what was going on there.

The Mars base was basically a government project. Politicians and civil servants had decided how to dole out the cash that was spent on it. They’d hired people to go there without really properly having a clear idea of what those people were supposed to do. That was what I eventually surmised, anyway.

For a while things went according to plan. We all carried out our tasks, although I spent a lot of time just reading, since there wasn’t really enough to keep me busy. We surveyed the surrounding area a lot, taking soil and air samples and checking the weather. I enjoyed that the most, since it was a chance to get outside.

Unfortunately there was only about an hour every day when it was actually nice to be outdoors. The rest of the time it was either too cold, or too hot, but mostly, too cold. At night temperatures often went down to -20 °C.

Those of us who had people they wanted to talk with on the Earth, which was everyone except me—my grandfather was too unsociable to put the effort in—talked to them via a satellite link. The signal from Earth took more or less ten minutes to reach us, and ten minutes to get back to Earth from our end, so usually the conversation basically consisted of voice messages that people would pick up later on, unless they were particularly anxious to try to have an actual conversation under those circumstances, with 20-minute gaps between every statement and every reply.

The communication link often went down, and sometimes for two days at a time. Once it went down for three days.

“They can send people to Mars but they can’t manage to send a radio signal.” Aron complained bitterly, on one such occasion.

“They have to deal with all kinds of practical difficulties.” said Noah. “Solar storms, bad atmospheric conditions here on Mars, all kinds of things.”

“No, the problem is they give jobs to whoever they think deserves a job,” said Mateo, “instead of who can actually do the job.”

We were sitting in the canteen at the time. There was just one big table in there but it had a big window, from which we could observe the vast grassy plain, and an automated mechanism kept the window immaculately clean. I actually liked the canteen more than any other room in the station. Someone had actually put some effort into it.

We’d been there a year without any particular drama, keeping our heads down and doing our jobs, when the communication link failed again. At first this excited no particular attention, since it was always dropping out, but when three days passed and it still wasn’t working, people began to get edgy.

Theo was unexpectedly angry about it.

“This is absolutely unacceptable.” he said. “Some of us have family we need to stay in touch with. I have a wife and children. Noah, you too, yes? And Sofia, your brother is ill. The least they can do is try to keep the damn bloody thing working.”

“I’m not sure I would have volunteered if I’d know communication would be this poor.” said Sofia quietly. “They told me I’d be able to send messages every day.”

“It’s completely rubbish.” Luke agreed, except he didn’t say ‘rubbish’. He used other language which I won’t repeat. “Probably come back up tomorrow. Nothing I can do at this end.”

“What if it doesn’t?” said Mateo.

No-one said anything in reply. I don’t know why, but we all had a bad feeling about this particular failure.

Maybe it was because news from the Earth had been unsettled over the past month or two. Things weren’t going well. Old disputes between nations were boiling up. People seemed angry, even though all the people we spoke with were under strict instructions not to cause alarm, and all of them had undergone at least two sessions with a government psychologist before they were allowed access to a communications terminal.

When the fourth day rolled around we became highly unsettled. We’d never gone that long without a comms link before. Even so, we were sure the problem would be resolved. Three of us were even due to return to the Earth, so we were expecting people to tell us when and where the landing of the ship that was supposed to take them home would happen.

But the days rolled by, and days turned into weeks, and we couldn’t get so much as a peep out of the satellite link.

“Couldn’t we set up a satellite dish so we can at least hear radio broadcasts from the Earth?” said Mateo.

Noah shook his head.

“The signals are way too weak by the time they get here. The problem is they spread out. We’d need a vast supercooled dish to have any hope of receiving anything. It’s way beyond what we could build with what we’ve got.”

By the time a month had gone by with no word from the Earth, we knew something was very seriously wrong.

“War.” said Luke. “There’s got to have been a war. Otherwise they would have fixed it.”

“Let’s not speculate.” said Sofia.

“We probably should speculate.” said Theo. “If there has been a war, we need to make appropriate preparations.”

“Preparations for what?” said Mateo.

“For staying here a very long time.” said Theo.

Really we had everything we needed to survive on Mars. It wasn’t like we absolutely had to go back to the Earth, but no-one actually wanted to stay there permanently, least of all me.

Our situation was fast becoming like that of some group of sailors or explorers in the old times, marooned on a remote island. At least there were no diseases on Mars, and we wouldn’t run out of water or food.

And then, one dark night when the temperature was down to -22°C, just about the worst thing possible happened: a gigantic storm hit. We stood watching it in the canteen.

“Could the glass break?” said Sofia.

“Nope.” said Theo.

“What about if a rock hits it?” said Mateo.

“Not even then.” said Theo, but he didn’t sound as sure as we would have all liked him to be.

“He’s right.” said Luke. “Reinforced isospheroplex. Nothing’s getting through this.”

We stood watching for a bit, then Sofia said, “The crops are getting torn up.”

“What can we do about it?” said Noah.

“I don’t know.” she replied. “We should have set up a wind break.”

“We should close all the cloches, maybe.” said Theo.

“Will they withstand the wind?” Sofia asked.

“For sure.” said Theo.

“We’d better do it, then.” said Sofia.

“I’m on it.” said Luke, and he went off to activate the motors that automatically opened and closed the cloches.

When he came back, he was pale and worried.

“Power’s down.” he said. “I think it’s the relay between the power station and the barn.”

The barn was actually just a name we gave for the high-tech enclosure where all the stuff was stored that monitored the crops. The power station was a nuclear fusion facility located just under a kilometre from the base, to reduce radiation exposure in the event of anything going wrong.

“You can’t go out there.” said Theo.

“Someone will have to.” said Noah. “Otherwise we’ll starve.”

We wrangled about it for some minutes, and finally it was decided that Sofia and Luke would go out and try to fix the problem. Luke because he was the best person for fixing the power relay, and Sofia because she wanted to check on the condition of the crops.

They set off in our big utility vehicle. We watched as the eight-wheeled car, heavy as a tank, drove slowly through the wind and rain.

The storm was incredible. Our instruments were showing gusts of up to 130 km/h, enough to overturn a van, but well within the tolerance of the utility vehicle.

The horizon was shot with spectacular flashes of lightning with a reddish tinge to them, like vertical columns of pure electricity, scarcely branched, presumably destroying whatever they hit, if there was anything there to destroy.

Noah talked to Sofia and Luke on a two-way radio which crackled continuously due to the electrical storm.

“We’re at the barn.” Luke said eventually. “It’s damaged.”

“How?” said Noah.

The reply was garbled, but it seemed like Luke said something had hit it.

Fifteen anxious minutes later, the radio crackled into life again, and he said there was nothing he could do, and they were going to inspect the crops.

“Just leave it.” said Noah. “It’s not worth the risk.”

Whatever Luke’s reply was, we couldn’t make it out. Noah repeated the message, but then we only heard static.

Around a quarter of an hour later we observed the utility vehicle speeding through the wind and rain at far above the regulation maximum speed. With the low gravity, at that speed the vehicle seemed to skim over the planet surface. It leaped spectacularly into the air before coming down again, sometimes visibly being blown to one side during the leap, rather resembling a badly-animated car in an ancient TV series.

We ran to the vehicle bay.

The vehicle bay had a kind of thing resembling an airlock that was purely designed to protect us from extreme weather while giving us easy access to the utility vehicle, or whatever we were using at the time; the vehicle would park inside, the outer door would close and an equally-large inner door would open. We all gathered around the inner door, waiting to find out what was going on.

Luke stumbled out of the vehicle half-hysterical, holding Sofia in his arms.

“I think she’s dead!” he cried.

Sofia was covered in blood.

Theo shouted “Get a stretcher!” at Mateo, and Noah said to Luke “What happened?”

Luke was barely coherent, and mumbled something about a rock hitting her.

We laid her out on the floor while we were waiting for Mateo, and it was clear that she was, in fact, dead. She had no pulse, and part of the side of her head was caved in.

Luke wasn’t prone to hysterics; he seemed the sort of man you’d be able to rely on in an emergency, but he was sobbing and pulling at his hair. We just assumed he had never experienced anything like this before and he’d been caught off-guard. Certainly Sofia’s death and appearance were shocking. We were all horrified.

Mateo arrived with a stretcher and two medical robots, who took her to the medical bay. A full-body scan confirmed almost immediately what we already knew: she was past saving.

Then Luke, who was inconsolable, also collapsed. We took him too to the medical bay, where the scanner found a tiny piece of rock lodged in his brain, having penetrated the back of his skull. It was as if he’d been shot.

He began to have a fit in the scanner, and he died a few minutes later. The medical robots weren’t able to save him.

Sofia must have been hit by debris from somewhere, hurled at her by the storm. Luke’s death was harder to explain.

“There must have been some kind of explosion in the barn, when his back was turned.” Theo suggested.

“Then there’d be metal in his brain instead of gravel.” Mateo protested.

“A rock must have got blasted to bits.” said Theo. “Or the explosion threw up a bunch of gravel.”

It was clearly the only explanation. We sat glumly trying to process the whole thing.

“I still can’t make contact with the Earth.” said Noah. “Everything’s down.”

“Something’s happened on the Earth.” said Aron. “War. Or a plague. Something very bad. It’s the only explanation.”

“If there’s been a global war, they should be sending more people here, so we can repopulate the planet later on.” said Mateo.

Aron laughed.

“Repopulate the planet? We’ll be lucky if we get out of this alive ourselves.”

“He has a point.” said Theo. “This planet was never meant for human beings. Without Earth support, our time here is going to be limited.”

Noah shook his head in disagreement.

“We need to check the crop situation. There are only four mouths to feed now. We can probably survive indefinitely.”

Aron laughed sarcastically.

Outside the window, the storm was still raging, showers of hail and pebbles periodically battering the glass. The mechanism that was supposed to keep the window clean had failed, and the glass was becoming covered in muddy filth.

The storm abated two days later, but then the temperatures outside plummeted down to -25 °C.

“No point looking at the crops now.” said Mateo despondently. “They can’t survive this.”

“We’ve still got the protein tanks and all the indoor stuff.” said Noah.

“So, looks like we’re eating nothing but garbage for at least six months.” said Theo. “Not the end of the world.”

We went to look at the crops. With a brisk wind it felt colder than -25, but nothing we couldn’t handle. They were frozen solid, obviously. We had a robot dig down into the ground and found even the root crops had frozen solid.

We tried cooking them and the swedes and carrots were fine but the potatoes were disgusting and turned to mush. We weren’t desperate enough to eat them.

We were getting used to not being in contact with the Earth, and the food situation seemed OK. The deaths of Sofia and Luke were horrible, but we all knew the risks when we volunteered. On the whole our situation didn’t seem too awful. It was simply a matter of waiting for the engineers on Earth to fix the comms link, which we were sure they would do, once whatever had caused the problem had blown over.

From Mars, the Earth looks like a tiny circle in the sky. It’s the second-brightest thing after the sun. Noah was always watching it on the computer screens, trying to figure out what might be going on down there. We had a large telescope trained on it, following its course through the sky every night. One day, a few weeks after our tragic accident, he came back from the observatory room with a very distressing announcement.

“I saw something.” he said. “Something big. Three of them.”

He was pale and shaking.

“What?” said Theo.

“I think they were nuclear explosions.” said Noah.

We raced to the observatory and began arguing over the best way to enhance the images, but Noah demonstrated very well that he really knew the most about it, and produced magnified and enhanced images of all three objects.

We stared at them, in shock.

“Two on the USA.” said Mateo, horrified. “Right over Washington. My wife lives there.” Then he corrected himself. “Ex-wife. With our kids.”

“One right over Moscow.” said Theo. “There’s not much doubt, speaking frankly.”

As we watched, more began to appear. Little puffs of smoke on the picture of the Earth on the main screen, which in reality must each have been dozens of kilometres wide.

Everywhere was getting hit. London. Beijing. Berlin. Tehran. Everywhere.

“No wonder they’ve not been in touch.” said Noah.

“They’ve got more important things to think about than us.” said Theo.

“They’ll send more people here.” said Mateo. “They have to. This is the only safe place.”

“In the middle of a nuclear war?” said Theo sceptically.

“Yeah, maybe not.” said Noah.

I tried to make a joke.

“Well, it’s not all bad.” I said. “I was quite behind with my tax payments.”

That went down a like a lead balloon. No-one laughed. Then I realised that everyone had probably lost people they loved, and I felt like a callous fool. The fact is I was in a state of shock, just like everyone else, and I have a bad habit of saying stupid things at such times.

The reality of the situation hadn’t fully sunk in but I was mentally calculating how long I might have to spend on Mars, or whether I’d even ever see the Earth again, and wondering how I’d cope with it all. On balance I felt that it was better than being in prison, or being marooned completely alone on a desert island, but not much better.

We spent the next day and a half pacing about, nervously watching the screens. The nuclear blasts, if that’s what they were, subsided after three hours, and no further ones appeared, but it was a full thirty-six hours before any of us could get to sleep.

After that everyone’s mood was pretty black, and we hardly spoke to each other, even when eating together.

I tried to suggest that we should make a plan with regard to food, but Theo just said, kindly enough, “Not now. Leave it for a while.” and that was that.

Then Mateo disappeared.

After a bit of investigation, we realised he’d taken the utility vehicle and he’d disabled the transponder. We sent out a couple of autonomous probes to look for him. After twenty minutes we located the vehicle. It was stationary, nearly thirty kilometres out.

“I’m going after him in the caterpillar.” said Noah.

“It’s too risky.” said Theo. “Send a drone or a robot.”

“A robot’s no good if he’s suicidal.” said Noah.

“You think he’s suicidal?” said Theo.

“His family’s probably dead and he’s just gone off into the middle of nowhere by himself.” said Noah. “I’d say the odds are pretty high.”

“It’s too far away for the caterpillar.” I said, but Noah was already on his way.

“It’ll take a while but we’ve no choice.” he said, over his shoulder.

I went to the canteen to take a look outside. The window was covered in grime but not so much that it was impossible to see through it. Outside a thick layer of snow lay on the ground and the temperature out there was -26 °C.

Soon I saw the caterpillar, bravely rolling over the snow on its tracks. The top speed of that thing was 15 km/h.

Noah reached Mateo over two hours later. Mateo had cut his own throat.

“Come back in the utility vehicle.” said Theo.

“I can’t.” said Noah.

“Why not? It’s much safer.”

There was a silence on the other end of the radio, then Noah said, “There’s blood everywhere.”

Theo, exasperated and thinking only of safety, said, “Just clean it up!”

“I’m not doing it.” said Noah adamantly, and after that he didn’t answer the radio.

We watched his progress on the computers. The caterpillar began to slowly crawl back towards us. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

“Noah, what’s happened?” said Theo on the radio, and finally Noah replied.

“I don’t know.” he said. “There was a noise like something snapping and it just stopped.”

“Are the tracks still on?”

“Yeah, but the engine’s gone wrong. It’s just spinning without driving anything.”

Theo cursed.

“Can you repair it?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin. Do you have any suggestions?”

“What do you think?” Theo said to me.

“I have no idea.” I said.

“Noah, you’ll have to walk back. You’re 20 kilometres out. It’s doable. We’ll send a drone to bring you some supplies. Don’t go anywhere till the drone reaches you.”

There was some swearing on the other end of the radio, but he said, “OK.”

We loaded a drone with anything we thought he might need. In theory the drone could even have carried Noah himself. With the lower gravity and the thick atmosphere resulting from terraforming, Mars was the ideal place for anything with rotors. The problem was, the drone wasn’t intended for carrying people and we honestly thought he would be safer walking.

We were wrong.

For about six kilometres he progressed steadily towards us, complaining about the deep snow, but otherwise fine. Then his transponder signal suddenly vanished, and we could no longer reach him on the radio.

“I don’t understand it.” said Theo.

“Could he have fallen into something? I mean, like a crevasse.”

“It’s possible.” said Theo. “I don’t know any more about it than you do.”

“We’ll have to go and search for him.”

“Negative. Leave it to the drones.”

We scanned the whole area thoroughly and, for hours on end, could see no trace of him. He seemed to have simply disappeared.

Then, eventually, Theo noticed a sort of dimple in the snow.

There was no radio signal and no thermal trace. We tried ground-penetrating radar, and that revealed a huge crack in the surface, already covered in snow.

“He might still be alive.” I said. “I can go and see if I can find him.”

“No.” said Theo. “I’m going to try crashing the drone through the snow.”

“You’ll probably lose it, I would think.”

“It’s better than risking our own necks.” said Theo.

He took the drone up five metres and then had it plummet towards the crevasse. It broke clean through the snow quite successfully, into a vast dark cavity below. And there, we saw Noah. Or rather, what was left of him. His neck lay at a horrible angle and his right arm was completely smashed. He was clearly dead.

“Bloody Mateo.” said Theo. “This is his fault.”

“He wasn’t in his right mind.” I said.

“Yeah.” said Theo.

For nearly two months it was just the two of us in there. We got along well enough and tried not to think too much about our dead colleagues, or about what was happening on the Earth. These thoughts were there, all the time, in the back of our minds, but we didn’t talk about them. I strenuously avoided thinking about them and I’m sure Theo did the same thing.

I don’t believe every problem can be solved by talking. The fact was that our situation was pretty bad; that couldn’t be helped, and thinking things over or discussing the situation would only have brought it uncomfortably into the forefront of our minds. I found that once I started worrying about things, it was hard to stop. Better not to begin in the first place.

We had to keep up our daily duties, or we would quickly get into an even worse situation. Food had to be grown and things had to be maintained. Repairs had to be made. The only way to keep going was to suspend all unpleasant thought, bury it in the backs of our minds, and quietly hope that the people on Earth would sort their problems out and remember us. If not, well, the months would turn into years and the years into decades, with only each other for company.

Theo was older than me so eventually he would probably die first, and then I’d enjoy my old age alone on Mars. But, as I’ve said, I tried not to think about what may or may not happen.

And then, just about the worst thing happened that could possibly happen at that point, short of one or both of us dying. Our electricity supply died.

I know electronics but I’m not a nuclear technician. I did my best to figure out what had happened. Theo knew a lot about managing an off-planet base and he investigated whatever he could investigate.

“It’s got to be the reactor.” I said. “I don’t think this is a sensor problem.”

“We have to go and fix it.” said Theo.

“It’s freezing out there and neither of us knows how to fix a reactor.”

We looked out of the filthy window at the endless landscape of snow and ice, which still hadn’t melted. In fact, the snow had only got deeper.

“I can see if there’s anything else I can do.” said Theo. “Most likely the weather will warm up a bit in a couple of weeks. We can last that long on battery power. You keep at it too.”

That was our biggest mistake. We should have gone and looked at the reactor before our batteries all ran out. By the time we were about ready to go, we were almost out of power, and then another storm struck.

For three days we watched helplessly as everything ran completely out of power. By the time the storm lifted, we had no heating and temperatures were plummeting even further. We had to wear thick suits just to survive outside for any time at all.

The worst of it was, by then even our navigational devices were out of power.

“It’s only a kilometre.” I said. “It’ll be fine.”

“Tomorrow morning.” said Theo. “Either we fix it, or we die.”

The next morning we set off. The sky was a brilliant blue and the snow hard underfoot. We’d made it about halfway when yet another storm came in out of nowhere. One minute we could see the reactor building clearly a short distance away; the next, it vanished in a swirling mass of snow.

Compasses don’t work on Mars and nothing electronic was working.

“It’ll be OK as long as we keep heading in the same direction.” said Theo, but I could see he was scared.

Under normal operation the reactor did a great job of shielding dangerous radiation. We’d be able to shelter inside the reactor building if it was intact.

We walked in what we thought was the right direction, but after a quarter of an hour there was still no sign of it.

“We must have passed it.” I said.

“Another ten minutes.” said Theo. “If we don’t find it then, we’ll turn back.”

After a further ten minutes there was still no sign of it.

“We’ll go back to the base.” said Theo.

Our tracks in the snow were rapidly becoming covered by more snow. We both knew the situation was desperate.

For hours we wandered around, getting colder and colder. We had no idea where we’d gone wrong.

“We’re going to die out here!” I shouted, above the noise of the storm.

“The base has to be here somewhere.” shouted Theo in reply.

I don’t know how long we wandered around for. We couldn’t decide whether we’d gone too far, or not far enough, whether we’d gone too far left or too far right. All directions appeared the same, and which one we chose became a matter of arbitrary instinct based on nothing useful.

The sun was beginning to set when we found it. On a short rocky incline stood a metal cylinder, and all around it the snow had melted, leaving a sort of crater in which it stood. It bore no markings; neither of nation nor flag, nor warning signs of any kind.

“It’s warm!” shouted Theo. “We can warm ourselves up!”

I hung back, frightened.

“What if it’s radioactive?” I said.

“It’s either this or we’ll die out here.” he replied.

“Let’s carry on looking for the base.”

“I can’t.” he said. “I’m too bloody damn cold. You’re young, you can cope with it better.”

He pressed himself against the cylinder.

He begged me to come and join him for my own sake, arguing that while whatever was inside probably was radioactive—otherwise how could the warmth be explained—the casing probably shielded the worst of the radiation.

That thing gave me the creeps. I was cold, bitterly cold, but I refused to go near it. Instead, I began to try to heap up snow with my gloved frozen hands, to create a windbreak. After an hour of effort I’d made almost half an igloo, but with no roof. Then it got too dark to see anything. What little light there was came from the Earth and the stars, and that was barely enough to see my hand in front of my face.

I settled down into my snow shelter, shivering.

“You’ll die if you sleep there!” shouted Theo.

“I’m not going to sleep!” I shouted in reply.

But I was exhausted; neither of us had slept properly in days, and in spite of my intentions and the extreme cold, I did somehow fall asleep.

The next thing I remember was a strange light forming in front of me: white, but slightly blueish, and hazy. I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep, alive or dead. If alive, then it seemed the sun was rising and it was already somewhat light, but I had no idea what this blueish thing was. The storm had abated somewhat, to be replaced with a thick freezing fog that gave the landscape a ghostly appearance, or at least what little I thought I could see of it.

Then I thought I saw a figure moving in the blue haze. I tried to focus on it. The idea came to me that probably I was dying, or dead; this was a near-death experience, of the kind I once used to read about. The form slowly resolved into the figure of my grandfather. So he was dead too; he was waiting to welcome me to the afterlife.

The figure stepped forwards and grasped my arms, dragging me to my feet and pulling me forwards into the light. Then an intense warmth seemed to suffuse my whole body, and I realised I was lying on the floor in my grandfather’s laboratory.

“You’re alive!” he exclaimed.

I sat up, groggily.

“How did I get here?” I said.

“A portal!” he said, jubilantly. “I’ve cracked it! An interplanetary portal! This is the future of space travel, not rockets. Looks like I found you only just in time. You’re half-frozen!”

I flexed my fingers. They were extremely cold and stiff, but not actually frozen. The high-tech gloves had at least protected me from that.

I wondered vaguely if I was hallucinating. Perhaps this was just the last gasp of a dying brain. Then I remembered something.

“Theo!” I almost shouted. “Theo’s still out there! You have to help him.”

My grandfather shook his head sadly.

He pressed some buttons on a remote and in front of me, looking at the glowing blueish portal from the other side, so to speak, I saw a horrific sight. It was Theo, lying half propped-up against a rock, a short distance from the cylinder.

The radiation had cooked him like a lobster. He was bright red, and frozen stiff, with blood-soaked icicles hanging from his face.

“Oh, God!” I exclaimed.

I recovered quickly, at least physically. It turned out that, although my grandfather had indeed transported me 358 million kilometres from Mars to his laboratory, his laboratory was no longer in England. His initial use of the portal technology, when he had first got it functioning well enough to transport a person a few thousand miles and hadn’t even been sure that he wouldn’t get mangled in the process, had been to transport himself and a bunch of equipment and supplies to somewhere in Brazil. We were deep in the rainforest, far enough away from civilisation to be comparatively safe from nuclear weapons.

He had built a facility out there that looked not unlike our Mars base, except the interior was rather less stark and the ceiling a little higher.

That was six months ago. Since then we have rescued over a hundred people, and we will rescue many more. I even managed to find Petra. She was living in a primitive bunker and on the verge of starvation.

We’re building a new civilisation out here in the forest, until such time as the rest of the world stops fighting and may once again become inhabitable.

Back in 1995 I graduated from a certain university with a first-class degree in physics. I won’t say which one, because I have nothing good to say about it.

My father was a scientist, and his father before him. I imagined I would become a scientist. But then I saw what the scientists at my university were actually doing, and it bored me rigid.

About a third of them were involved in stuff that could never be proven and could never be useful. String theory or whatever. To me, that’s not science.

The rest of them were nothing but technologists. They were trying to make improved CDs, or analysing oil flow in oil pipes. Doubtless that’s useful but it didn’t float my boat. It wasn’t my cup of tea.

The woke stuff hadn’t really come in at that point, so at least that was something. If I were studying today, I doubt whether I could even have graduated.

I’d grown up reading about Faraday and Einstein and Galileo, and I wanted to work on something exciting, but nothing in contemporary physics excited me.

After graduating I started writing bits of computer software and selling it on CDs and floppy disks. I rented a tiny studio flat above a pub, which was all I could afford. The noise from the pub drove me nuts, but at least it closed at 11pm.

I’d avoided alcohol the whole time I was an undergraduate, even though my fellow students were mostly quite partial to binge drinking, but once I’d got the flat I developed a bad habit of going downstairs to the pub and drinking more than was good for me. Looking back, I suppose I was quite depressed.

Physics had been my religion, and I’d lost my religion, after a long period of gradual disenchantment.

I had one good friend from university, a fellow by the unlikely name of Rupert. Rupert was intensely posh and had been studying Medieval History. After graduating he took over his father’s antiques shop. I used to go there sometimes when the shop wasn’t very busy, which was most of the time, and we’d just talk about stuff.

I went there one day and he told me about a medicine chest they’d just bought, from 1938 Germany.

“Do you want to see?” he asked me. “It’s in the back.”

A Nazi medicine chest? Of course I wanted to see it.

The chest was just an ordinary wooden cabinet. It wasn’t plastered with Swastikas or anything.

“There are people who collect this kind of thing. Of course it’s not strictly an antique, but I’m sure we can sell it.”

“Who’s collecting this stuff?” I asked him. “Elderly Germans? Skinheads?”

Rupert laughed.

“No, just people with a morbid sense of curiosity, like you.”

“I do have a morbid sense of curiosity.” I agreed.

“You can take some of the contents of it if you want.” he said. “We can’t sell it.”

“I’d love to!” I told him, enthusiastically. “Why can’t you sell it?”

“Well, it’s old medicines. Might not be legal.”

He gave me a bunch old pill bottles, and I stuffed them in my coat pockets.

“Well, thanks, I suppose.” I said.

“Welcome. Be careful with them. I don’t advise taking any of them.”

“Rupert!” I said indignantly. “You know me!”

I had previously enjoyed a reputation for sobriety, as I’ve explained, although I was fast losing it.

At home I laid the pill bottles out. I had no idea what any of them were. In those days the internet was still quite primitive, but I’d got a dial-up connection and I started researching the pills as well as I could.

Most of them turned out to be various extracts of animal glands, of dubious utility, but several tin tubes, all bearing the same label, caught my attention. The tubes said Pervitin on their sides, and I gathered Pervitin was some kind of stimulant.

I felt at the time that I could do with a bit of a pick-me-up. I was in a rut, and it was getting increasingly difficult even to write the software that made me a living. I placed one of the pills on the table in front of me. It was white and looked harmless enough.

I took one and washed it down with half a glass of water.

The effect was subtle, but discernible. That evening I found myself working on a computer program with renewed enthusiasm. I carried on working till three in the morning, which wasn’t unusual for me, and after that I had trouble sleeping. I think I got to sleep around 5 a.m.

After that I took a pill every day. They were awfully moreish. Before long I doubled the dose, taking one mid-morning and one in the evening. Often I didn’t get to sleep till 6 or 7 a.m., but I didn’t seem to need much sleep.

Actually, insomnia fast became a real problem, and before long I needed at least a couple of Pervitin just to function. This worried me, because my supply was extremely limited. I decided just to try to get as much work done as I could before they ran out, then I’d just have to have a week off or something.

I didn’t want to end up completely nocturnal, so I always made an effort to get to sleep around 3 a.m., but that wasn’t really happening. I developed the habit of taking a walk, to try to get myself in the mood for sleeping.

These walks got longer and longer. I’d get back sometimes and discover it was already nearly five a.m. It surprised me how time flew.

Over near the edge of town was an abandoned factory with a high fence around it. I used to walk along a path at the back of it. There were no street lights there; it was just a muddy track, but as long as there was a bit of a moon, there was enough light to navigate.

I think it was on my third Pervitin-inspired walk around the back of the factory that I first noticed a light in one of the windows of the old factory building. I remember stopping and staring at it. I couldn’t see any sign of movement.

In the weeks that followed, sometimes the light was on and sometimes it wasn’t.

My imagination began to run wild over this light. Surely the electricity to the factory must have been cut off long ago, so the light, I reasoned, must be powered by a generator. A random homeless man surely wouldn’t have troubled to hook up a generator, and run it in the middle of the night. I thought perhaps the light could have been rigged up by squatters, but why would squatters be up at 3 a.m.? Were they having parties, or what?

It seemed to me that whatever was going on in there, it was probably something illegal. Something that could only be done in an abandoned factory in the dead of night.

I started looking for a way into the factory grounds. There was none, but the curiosity was driving me mad, so I bought a small pair of wire cutters and, one dark night, by the light of a pen light, I cut a hole behind a bush, where I hoped no-one would notice it.

I wriggled through the hole, scratching myself a bit in the process, and walked over to the lighted window, making as little noise as possible. Since the lights were on behind the window and it was almost completely dark outside, I reckoned the chances of them seeing me were minimal.

When I arrived at the window, for a while I stood there almost in shock, unable to process what I was seeing.

I saw several men in lab coats standing around, looking at a rusty old wrecked car. The amazing thing was, the car appeared to be floating about a metre off the ground. I couldn’t see any visible means of support underneath it, nor any ropes or cables holding it up.

As I watched one of the men prodded it and it moved slightly before springing back into position and vibrating a bit.

Then a possible explanation for this odd sight sprang into my mind. They must have a powerful electromagnet underneath the car, which was somehow using an alternating current to create a repulsive force. Certainly it’s possible to do that with non-magnetic materials, but the car was clearly made of steel. It was visibly rusting, and only alloys of iron rust, and iron is definitely magnetic, or ferromagnetic to use the technical term.

I tried to think whether it might be possible to somehow repel a ferromagnetic substance like that, and I couldn’t think how, unless it was itself magnetised, but then I had never really given a lot of thought to the question.

The window was rather high and I had to stand on my toes to see into it, but there was old bricks lying around, so I tried to pile up a few bricks so I could get a better look.

After a bit of effort, piling up bricks as quietly as possible, I was able to see properly into the lighted room. As I watched, one of the men took a pen and lightly threw it towards the car, and it too floated, suspended in mid-air.

Then I lost my footing as the pile of bricks collapsed, and in an effort to maintain my balance I grasped wildly at the window frame, hitting the window with my hand.

Once I’d regained my feet I saw that half the men had cleared out of the room, and the other half were staring at the window with worried expressions. Then I saw figures with flashlights approaching from a side door.

I ran as fast as I could back to the hole in the fence.

I managed to reach the fence well before they could catch up with me, but as I was scrabbling through the hole one of them shone a flashlight on my face, and I think they got a pretty good look at me.

As I ran down the muddy track, they also began to crawl through the hole and run after me. They pursued me for a good five minutes, but soon I managed to lose them by taking a circuitous route around the streets of the nearby village, and before long I was safely back in my flat above the pub.

I had a throbbing sensation in my head and I was tempted to take another Pervitin, but in the end I just lay quietly on my bed, waiting for sleep that never came.

For about a week after that, everything was normal. I continued to work through my supply of Pervitin; by then I couldn’t really feel the effects of one tablet, and I took two at a time. I was starting to feel vaguely depressed, and the Pervitin no longer had the magical effect it’d had at the start. Furthermore, there was no question but that I had formed an addiction to it, or at least a dependency. Without it, I felt completely terrible. This worried me, because I could see that my supply would soon run out.

My appetite wasn’t great, and I was losing weight. I couldn’t be bothered to cook, since I had little interest in eating, and I began to survive only on things I’d bought from a bakery in town.

One day I went to this bakery to buy something to eat, and I fell into a particularly paranoid mood. But it was to turn out that my paranoia was not without justification.

I remember feeling nervous. The whole business at the factory was preying on my mind. Every person I passed, I wondered if they could have been among the men at the factory. And then, passing a rather bland-looking man in a grey business suit, I was sure I saw a look of recognition on his face. He tried to suppress it, but he had recognised me, and I had the awful feeling he’d been one of them men in lab coats who had pursued me into the nearby village.

I bought a couple of pastries at the bakery and then, feeling completely rattled, I decided to pay Rupert a visit.

He was sitting in an empty shop as usual, reading A Tale of Two Cities.

“Where’ve you been?” he said to me. “I want to tell you some stuff.”

“I’ve got some stuff I have to tell you first.” I said, and I told him about the factory, and about my fear that I’d just been recognised.

“I was afraid of this.” he said. “Listen, I’ve found out some stuff about Pervitin.”

“What about it?”

“It went on sale in 1938, and the Nazis banned it in 1940 because they realised it was addictive.”

“That’s not going to be a problem for me. I’m going to run out soon, then I can’t get any more.”

“That’s not all. It causes psychosis. If you’ve been taking it since I gave it to you, you’re probably already suffering from paranoia. Maybe you even hallucinated the whole thing in the factory.”

“I didn’t hallucinate it.” I said, but his words made my stomach twist. I thought he might have a point about the paranoia.

“Throw them away. It’s not worth the risk.”

I wasn’t going to do that. The very suggestion put my back up. The pills were the only thing keeping me going at that point. I’d been intending to taper them off, although I hadn’t started the tapering process. On the contrary, I was only taking more and more of them.

“Don’t worry about it. Soon I’ll have finished them, and that’s that.”

I ended up getting into a bitter argument with Rupert about the pills, and at the time I wasn’t even sure why. I couldn’t quite seem to control myself, and I left in a massive huff.

That night I suffered particularly severe insomnia. Finally I decided to go for a walk in the hope of calming myself. I felt a terrible anxiety in the pit of my stomach, mostly centring around the idea of the people from the factory finding me.

On the one hand, I could simply tell myself not to think about it. But then I was afraid that if I didn’t think about it, I would overlook some important point that would cause me to fall into their clutches. For example, although I was living on the second floor, it struck me that I ought to check that all the windows were fastened every night. If I hadn’t been worrying about the topic, I wouldn’t have thought of that. So then I felt like I couldn’t afford not to worry about it, but the worry made me sick as a pike.

I went out into the cool night air. In a way, I often felt safer outside than inside. Outside, if one of them spotted me, I was pretty confident in my ability to outrun them. Inside, they’d have me cornered.

As soon as I stepped outside I knew it was a mistake. I had a terrible paranoid feeling that I was being followed. I should have just gone straight back in again, but I was afraid they’d attack me right at my doorway and I wouldn’t be able to get away.

I tried to take a circuitous route to lose any pursuers. Several times I thought I saw a shadow flitting around a corner behind me, but I couldn’t be sure. I began to almost jog, walking at a fast pace, sometimes literally breaking into a run.

Then, as I was rounding a corner, I ran into them: three of them. They were dressed in ordinary clothing, and I guessed them all to be between about 45 and 60 years of age. Individually, although I’m no fighter, I thought I could perhaps handle them, but three of them all together was a challenge. They weren’t especially tough-looking, except for one of them who had a jaw like a lantern, as the saying goes, but he was the oldest and I could have hoped that age had already weakened him, or at least rendered him less agile than he might once have been.

The lantern-jawed man shouted “Grab him!” and the two others seized my arms while I was still frozen in shock. Then he produced a hypodermic syringe.

Time seemed to slow down. I screamed “No!” at them and I made a concerted effort to drag my arms out of their grasp, but it was useless. Then an idea came into my head, as though an angel had whispered to me, and I pretended to submit. I let my body go slack and I only said, “Who are you?”

Lantern-jaw said “This is for your own good.” and he pulled my coat aside and down from my shoulder and positioned the needle near my bicep. Without giving them any warning I twisted myself around, yanking my arms out of their grasp, and ran back in the direction I had come.

I nearly ran into another of them; the pursuing shadow hadn’t been purely in my imagination after all, but I shoved him and carried on running. He was a somewhat rotund man with spectacles, and seemed almost as shocked as I was by our encounter.

I ran straight back to my flat and unlocked the door, my heart beating wildly and the blood rushing in my head. I locked the door behind me and ran up the stairs, ready to put my fist in the face of anyone who might be lurking on the landing. But there was no-one there, and soon I was safely back in my flat, my back pressed against the locked door.

In spite of the adrenalin and the unpleasant sensation of blood rushing around my head, I could feel the last dose of Pervitin wearing off, and I quickly swallowed another two and washed them down with some water. Then I pulled a chest of drawers in front of the door.

Evidently they knew where I lived. They had waited for me, watching with the patience of a snake, until I’d finally emerged. Then they had followed me, waiting till I reached a spot where they could fall on me unobserved.

What was in the syringe? I guessed some kind of tranquilliser, or else a poison. Best case, they wanted to drug me and take me back to their lair, wherever that was—in the factory or somewhere else—and interrogate me in case I had been sent to spy on them. Worst case, the syringe contained an undetectable poison and they’d leave my body on the street, and the police would think I’d had a heart attack or something.

The next day I phoned Rupert and begged him to come over. He wasn’t pleased about having to leave his shop and he clearly thought I’d lost my mind due to the Pervitin. I was afraid to say too much on the phone in case they were somehow listening in. He came nonetheless. I told him to ring the bell three times in quick succession so I’d know it was him.

When he rang the bell I buzzed him in with the intercom. I still didn’t let him in till I’d got a good look at him through the spy hole in the door and had made sure he was alone. Once he was inside I quickly locked the door and pushed the chest of drawers back into place.

“What on Earth is all this about?” he said.

“Some men grabbed me and tried to inject me with something.” I told him. “The men from the factory. I recognised them. They’re onto me, Rupert. They know where I live.”

He had a good go at trying to convince me that I was suffering psychosis, but I could see that, in the end, he believed my story. It’s one thing to imagine fleeting shadows or to have a vague sense of being followed; it’s quite another to hallucinate actually being grabbed by two men on the street while a third waves a syringe in your face.

“We need to go to the police.” he said.

“They look like the kind of people who might have police connections.” I replied.

“No, that’s paranoia. They’re doing secretive stuff in an abandoned factory, for pity’s sake.”

“Just because they’re secretive doesn’t mean they’re squatters or something. They probably own the factory and just do things at night because they don’t want anyone to see what they’re doing. I’m not going to the police.”

Rupert raised his eyebrows sceptically.

“What about this floating car?” he said. “How do you explain that? You’re the physics chap. It sounds like a hallucination. You shouldn’t be taking those pills. We should have thrown them away.”

“I don’t know. It could be something with magnets.”

“If we’re not going to the police, what are we going to do?”

“I need to hole up here.” I said. “I just need your help a bit. I need you to bring me a bit of shopping. If I go out, I’m in danger. I’m sorry about this, Rupert, I really am, but I don’t know anyone else here well enough to ask them.”

“No, it’s fine.” said Rupert. “Don’t worry. Give me a list of what you need and I’ll get it, old boy. Then let’s hope this blows over soon.” He cast a wary eye over the little tin tubes of Pervitin. “Maybe when that stuff runs out.”

“I’m not imagining it all.”

He didn’t say anything.

I wasn’t imagining the whole thing. I don’t doubt that Pervitin is dangerous and that it can cause psychosis, but I wasn’t psychotic. I was paranoid, but with reason. The Pervitin probably did make the paranoia and anxiety much worse, but it wasn’t the entire reason for it.

For two weeks I stayed in my flat, and Rupert kindly brought me shopping from time to time. At night I lay awake, straining my ears for every sound. Often I thought I heard scrabbling and scratching sounds outside my door. I kept a kitchen knife by my bed; in Britain if you stab an intruder you’ll probably go to prison, but I felt that was at least better than falling into the clutches of those fiends.

By day I watched the street from behind net curtains. I moved my desk in front of the window so I could peer out while I worked. The annoying thing was, I couldn’t see the doorway from that window, unless I hung my head out of it. I did exactly that several times, but there was never anyone there.

Several times I saw a man standing across the road, possibly watching my doorway, but it was hard to be sure. It was a different man every time. One man in particular caught my attention. He wore a brown leather jacket and beige trousers, and somehow looked wrong, as though his clothes were a costume he’d put on to blend in. I can’t explain it, but that was how he struck me. He stood across the road smoking a cigarette, casting glances up and down the street. He didn’t look especially tough but there was something in his face that give me chills: a certain cold lack of feeling. I felt that this man was capable of anything. I didn’t recognise him; he wasn’t one of the three who had tried to jab me with a needle.

He disappeared after half an hour and after that I didn’t see him again.

I couldn’t concentrate much on my work. Computer programming is a lot about thinking and a bit about typing. I’d stare out of the window, try to focus on the task at hand, then I’d find my thoughts straying to the men in the factory, and to whatever was going on in the street. I didn’t seem to have the mental energy to focus on my work properly.

Finally the Pervitin ran out. I swallowed the last two pills with a sense of relief. Had that stuff been freely available, I would have had a very difficult time voluntarily foregoing it, but since it hadn’t been manufactured in at least fifty years, the matter was decided for me.

In the following days I sunk into absolute despair. I felt like nothing mattered and there was no point to anything. I was tired as Hell, and I slept a lot, but I slept fitfully and awoke still feeling washed out.

I craved Pervitin and there was none to be had. I began to ask people in newsgroups whether they’d heard of it and knew where to get it. As I’ve said, the internet then was nothing like it is today. It wasn’t like I could just look up Pervitin and find out what was in it, or sign on to some illegal website and order a bunch of Pervitin pills. The best I could do was to post messages on public boards and hope someone would reply.

The stupid thing was, I’d used my real name on some of those groups, because they were work-related and I was trying to uphold some kind of reputation as a real person for writing useful software.

That was how they found me.

After a week my craving for Pervitin was somewhat diminished, but I was still horribly lethargic and apathetic, if not downright depressed, and my ability to concentrate was still shot. I was at the point where I ought to have been able to just leave the Pervitin alone. The problem was, I still remembered how great I’d felt when I first started taking it, and I couldn’t help but contrast that with how completely rubbish I felt now that the pills had run out.

The craving itself was comparatively mild but very insistent. It was like a slow drip-drip-drip, wearing away at my resolve little by little, like a trickle of water wearing a groove along a rock.

So when someone replied to one of my messages, I was immediately galvanised.

“I have Pervitin.” it said. “A hundred tablets. I collect memorabilia related to WWII and I have ten tubes in my possession. Willing to sell for fifty pounds. The tubes are in mint conditions and as far as I can tell the tablets are perfectly preserved.”

A hundred pills! I told myself it was the perfect number. I would systematically ration them out, gradually tailing off. I would take just enough to alleviate my state of ennui, maybe just one tablet per day, then reduce by ten percent a week.

Of course that was nonsense. I was lying to myself and I knew it, but it didn’t really matter. I could lie well enough to sell myself on the idea of buying these pills, and that was that.

I wrote back immediately.

The purported seller went only by the handle “Gersdorff”. I wondered if he was German. Perhaps even some old Nazi who’d held onto the tablets for all these years. Or maybe he’d been persecuted by the Nazis and had a morbid fascination for the whole subject. These kinds of thoughts went round and round my head. Then I realised I was being stupid. The handle meant nothing. For all I knew Gersdorff was an English university student with an odd sense of humour, or just an unusual surname.

I arranged to meet him. He wanted to meet on a certain street corner very early in the morning, the day after next, before sunrise. I suggested a café but he wasn’t having it. I could understand his point of view. I had no idea whether the tablets were legal or not. Gersdorff may or may not be an actual drug dealer, I thought, but he was now literally dealing drugs—to me—so of course he didn’t want to meet somewhere too public.

This would mean that I’d have to leave my flat, and at a time when there weren’t many people about, but it would have to be faced.

When the time came for our meeting, I’d spent another sleepless night. My alarm went off at 4 a.m. and I was already lying awake waiting for it.

I got dressed, drank a coffee and put a coat on. Then I opened the window and leaned out so I could see the door. There was no-one there, and I could see no-one on the street.

I hurried down the stairs, went out through the door, and walked briskly off into the cool morning air. I thought I could just about see the first signs of a pending sunrise.

Twenty minutes later I was approaching the street corner where we were supposed to meet. I slowed my pace and scanned the street warily. I saw no-one. I walked in a wide arc around the corner so I could get a good view of the adjacent street before anyone could spring out at me, and it also seemed as dead as a doornail. Then I stood and waited, casting nervous glances down all four of the roads that met at that point.

There was nothing special about the street corner. It was just a quiet intersection in a quiet suburb.

Finally I saw him, walking slowly up to me. He was middle-aged and carried a suitcase. His appearance was reassuring to me; he seemed harmless, and looked like an antiques dealer or a collector of some sort.

When he reached me he greeted me affably.

“May I ask what is your interest in Pervitin?” he said. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

I hadn’t got any good answer ready, so I made something up on the spot.

“I’m writing a novel.” I said. “Set in WWII, in Germany. One of my characters is addicted to Pervitin. I’m buying some old stuff from the era to help me get into the right frame of mind.”

I felt embarrassed even hearing my own words. I sounded like an addict who’d just concocted an excuse on the spot.

He simply smiled and made sounds indicating vague interest.

He lifted the suitcase and asked me to hold it while he unlocked it. A vehicle was approaching somewhere off down one of the quiet roads, which didn’t especially alarm me, since even at that time of the morning there’s usually an occasional passing car.

He was entering a number into a combination lock. The vehicle was drawing closer, about to pass. I glanced at it. It was a white van.

Something suddenly felt off. He spotted the alarm in my eyes. The case dropped to the ground. The van screeched to a halt and three men ran out. My contact seized my wrist. I struggled to get free but he had a grip like a vice. Two of the men forced my hands behind my back and locked handcuffs onto my wrists.

“Who are you?” I shouted, but I knew exactly who they were. I recognised the man with the lantern jaw; he was standing in front of me while the other two restrained me. I recognised one of the others also; he was the man who’d been watching my door, wearing a brown leather jacket and smoking.

They said nothing, but bundled me into the van.

“What do you want?” I said frantically, as the van drove off.

Lantern-jaw was preparing an injection for me, sucking up some liquid from a vial into a hypodermic syringe. I thought I was going to die from fear.

“There’s no point me explaining now.” he said. “First, the injection.”

“Don’t!” I shouted. “Please!”

But he pulled my jacket aside, and the sweater and t-shirt I was wearing underneath, yanking down the collars, and stuck the needle into my arm, near the shoulder.

“What is this stuff?” I said, but none of them would talk to me.

I could feel the van turning this way and that.

“Where are you taking me?”

They said nothing, but they had odd expressions on their faces. They looked worried. None of them really looked like the sort of people who kidnap people for a living.

Soon the van slowed and the driver jumped out, I guessed to open a gate.

I was fairly sure we were pulling into the abandoned factory.

By then I had given up trying to ask them anything.

They opened the van doors at the back and pulled me out.

I was right; we were at the factory. They took me inside.

“We’ll chain him up there.” said lantern-jaw, pointing to an old pipe.

“We should have got some Xanax or something.” said one of the men holding my arms.

“Not now.” said lantern-jaw, as if to silence him.

They unfastened one of the handcuffs and locked it to the pipe. Then lantern-jaw spoke to me.

“I’m sorry for the subterfuge.” he said, squatting so his face was on a level with mine. “I know you don’t believe me, but this is for your own good. We’re going to leave you here for an hour, then I’ll be back.”

He stood up to leave with the others.

“What are you going to do with me?” I shouted after him, in an ecstasy of fear.

He turned around.

“We’re going to let you go.” he said. “In a little while.”

Somehow that scared me more than anything. He couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. Why would they go to so much trouble, only to let me go again? Either they’d injected me with something really evil, and I was some kind of experiment to them, or else they were planning to kill me. I could see no alternative explanation.

As he was leaving through a metal door with graffiti sprayed on it, he said, over his shoulder, “Please don’t struggle. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

I looked at the pipe they’d fastened me to. He was right. It was solid steel, with steel brackets at either end holding it to the wall.

I tried to get free nonetheless. I kicked against the pipe and the brackets that held it. I tried to squeeze my hand through the handcuff. Nothing worked.

By the time he returned, an hour or so later, a comparative sense of calm had descended on me. I was resigned to my fate. The apathy that had followed my withdrawal from Pervitin was, in any case, so intense that I had half-seriously considered topping myself at certain points, and if these people were going to save me the trouble, then so be it.

He squatted down in front of me.

“We’ve been discussing what to do with you.” he said.

“Oh, really?” I said, sarcastically.

“We think you could help us, and we could help you.”

“How deeply humanitarian of you.”

“The injection I gave you was for your own good. I’m willing to explain. I’m going to unfasten these handcuffs, and before you run off, I want to show you something.”

I eyed him warily, but a slight smile on his face seemed strangely reassuring.

He unlocked the handcuffs and I stood up, rubbing my wrist.

“This had better be good.” I said.

“Oh, you needn’t have any fear on that score.” he said. “Come this way, please. My name’s Robert. Dr. Robert Armitage. You can call me Bob.”

He led me into the very room I had seen previously from the window. Where previously the car had been floating was the man I’d seen outside my flat, except he was floating about three feet in the air.

“We are a small group of independently-wealthy scientists.” said Bob. “We believe the mainstream of science is corrupt and ineffectual. It has its place, but progress in fundamental physics has effectively ceased. We wanted to change that, and we have.

“We’ve discovered the missing link between the three electromagnetic fundamental forces, and gravity. We are able to generate gravitational fields to order. With this discovery, humanity could proceed to colonise other planets.”

Someone pressed a switch, and the man floating in front of me slowly sank to the ground. He came over to me and proffered his hand.

“Steven Attlee.” he said. “Bob is our chief scientist.”

I shook his hand, dazedly.

“The problem is,” said Steve, “exposure to the rapidly-fluctuating gravitational fields created by our machines does something to the blood-brain barrier, which initiates a steady deterioration of brain processes. We’ve found a drug that prevents it, but as yet we can’t generate fully stable gravitational fields that avoid the problem entirely.”

“That’s what we injected you with.” said Bob. “You were already in a paranoid state. It would have been useless to explain anything to you before the drug had a chance to work. Also, it appears you got addicted to Pervitin. Very bad idea. Nasty stuff. Even so, we believe you have potential. We’d like to offer you a job. A chance to work with us.”

I looked around at the assembled team of scientists.

“And if I … decline your generous offer?” I said.

“You’re free to leave.” said Bob.

“But don’t do that.” said Steve.

“In that case, I gratefully accept.” I said.

All of this happened nearly ten years ago. We’ve made progress since then. But the technology we’ve discovered is powerful. Perhaps too powerful for humanity to handle. We discuss the matter regularly. Our debates sometimes get heated.

I suppose, in the end, it’s up to the world’s governments to convince us that they can be trusted with a technology this powerful. If they can’t, well, we’ll have to keep it under wraps.

Our chemist has long since reformulated the injections into pill form, which I take every day.

Last week Rupert came to visit me. I was surprised they let him in, but they know we know each other. I very rarely leave the abandoned factory where we work.

He seemed sad, as I told him about our latest progress.

“Just make sure you keep taking the pills.” he said. “I think you’re improving. I really do. It’s slow but definite.”

“Oh, we’re improving for sure.” I said. “We’re getting better and better. Soon we’ll have the gravity fields stabilised completely.”

“Of course.” said Rupert, with a little sad smile.

“What do you suppose that means?” said Derek, who was driving.

“Probably three hundred quid for a guess.”

“I mean, can we keep driving, or what?”

“It’s still going isn’t it?” said Archie.

“Fair point.” said Derek.

“This thing’s like a slot machine in reverse. Lights come on and you’ve somehow lost a load of cash.”

“Why don’t you buy a new car? We’re doing all right. You can afford it.”

“Anna wants to go on holiday to Portugal.” said Archie glumly.

“Portugal?” said Derek incredulously. “Why would anyone go to Portugal?”

“Believe me, it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”

They drove on in silence for a while, Archie gazing idly at the Yorkshire hills, lost in thought.

When Derek spoke again, Archie almost jumped.

“So what’s this next one?”

“Time machine.” said Archie. “Some bloke thinks he’s developed a time machine.” He sighed heavily. “The usual story, of course. Massive business interests suppressing his innovative technology. Politicians trying to murder him, and so on and so forth.”

“Archie, what’s the point of this?” said Derek. “I’m tired of these people. They’re all paranoid and they wouldn’t know proper scientific methodology if it beat them over the head in a dark alley. Our website’s supposed to be about overlooked scientific innovations, not mental derangement.”

“All very easy for you to say.” said Archie. “You don’t own an old Alfa and your girlfriend doesn’t want to go to Portugal. The fact is, a time machine will get us clicks and views, and clicks and views bring in the money.”

“You know damn he’s not made a time machine. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t decide we’re from the government and try to brain us with a spanner.”

“Clicks and views, Derek.” said Archie distantly, gazing at the fog descending on the hills in the distance. “Clicks and views.”

Some time later they pulled up outside a pleasant little cottage on the outskirts of a tiny village. The village featured only a small shop for a few basic groceries, a pub, a town hall and a church. The houses were made of stone, with slate roofs.

“This is actually quite nice.” said Derek.

“What, the house?” said Archie.

“The entire place. I could see myself living in a place like this.”

“You’d have to get into farming or repairing stone walls.”

“Nah, I’m sure they’ve got internet. Everywhere has internet these days. Worst case, have to use a mobile. Can probably get 5G from those masts on the hill.”

Archie was already getting out of the car.

“Let’s go and see what’s what, then.” he said.

They knocked firmly on the door and an elderly man appeared, dressed in the blue overalls of a mechanic. He was extremely thin, with high cheekbones and a full head of immaculately-styled white hair. He seemed chirpy enough, but pale, and his eyes seemed to speak of a vague underlying sadness.

“Good Afternoon.” he said. “You must be Derek and Archie.”

“The very same.” said Archie. “And you must be Dr. Riddick.”

“I am indeed, but you may call me Peter.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Peter.” said Archie.

“Well, do come in.” said Riddick.

The man walked off into the recesses of the house.

“No bow tie.” Archie whispered to Derek. “That’s a good sign.”

“He’s not pretending to be an academic either.” whispered Derek.

“No, but he is actually an academic. Was. Physicist.”

“Eleusis is in the basement.” said the man cheerily over his shoulder.

“Eleusis?” said Derek.

“That’s what I call the machine. Bit of a nod to the Ancient Greeks.”

They descended the cellar steps and found themselves confronted with numerous massive wire coils and vats of liquid nitrogen emitting white fog.

“So this is a time machine?” said Archie.

“Exactly.” said the man. “Oh, but I’m being rude. Can I offer you two gentlemen a tea?”

“No, we’re fine, thanks.” said Derek. “Do you mind if we film it?”

“Be my guest.”

They walked around the apparatus filming it and photographing it.

“Fascinating.” said Archie.

“So,” said Derek, “how does it work?”

“It’s quite simple, in essence.” said Riddick. “The difficulty is you’d need to be familiar with my theory of spatio-temporal resonance. Are you familiar with it?”

“‘Fraid not.” said Archie. “Is it published somewhere?”

“Why, yes.” said Riddick, leading against one of the wire coils with one hand. “As a matter of fact, I published it —”

But at that moment his hand slipped. He emitted a yelp as he fell backwards, falling on a lever.

For Archie and Derek, everything went suddenly dark.

“Derek?” said Archie, tentatively.

“Yes.” said Derek.

“I can’t see anything.”

“Neither can I.”

“What happened?”

“I think he activated the machine by mistake.”

“So we’re blind now?” said Archie.

“Possibly.” said Derek. “However, I suggest we consider alternative hypothesis.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, the lights went out.”

“Peter?” said Archie, expecting Riddick to reply.

“I don’t think he’s here.” said Derek. “I can’t feel any of the stuff either. I think we’ve gone somewhere else.”

“Wait, there’s a door here.” said Archie.

Feeling around, he located a door handle and swung open a door.

Faint sunlight streamed down a flight of stairs, heavily draped in cobwebs, dim rays of light illuminating thick dust.

“We’re still in the cellar.” said Derek.

“What a relief.” said Archie. “I really don’t want to be blind. I mean, it’s probably not as bad if you’re born blind. Then you can get used to it. If you can see all your life and then you get blinded by an enormous machine, that’s different.”

“Let’s get out of here.” said Derek.

They made their way up the stairs and emerged into the ruins of a house. Dust and cobwebs lay everywhere, alongside pieces of half-broken furniture.

“Reeks to high Hell in here.” Derek commented.

Archie tried the door, and it opened.

They stepped out into an enormously overgrown garden, and from there made their way back onto the narrow road that led past Riddick’s house.

“Your car’s gone.” said Derek.

“Oh.” said Archie. “Well, that’ll save me some money I suppose.”

“How did the house get like this?”

The house from which they’d emerged was clearly in a severe state of disrepair. Several windows were boarded up, and the others cracked and broken. The garden gate was covered in rust and hadn’t been oiled for years.

“I have a hypothesis.” said Derek.

“Do tell.”

“The time machine works, and we’ve gone way into the future. At least twenty or thirty years, I’d say.”

“Makes sense.” said Archie, with growing excitement. “Hey, this could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. Proper viral content.”

“That’s all you can think about?” said Derek. “You’ve just travelled through time and you’re thinking about viral content?”

“I’ve got bills to pay!” Archie protested. “Did I tell you, Anna wants to go on holiday to Portugal?”

“Archie,” said Derek, “That was twenty or thirty years ago. She’s probably totally forgotten about you by now, never mind the holiday.”

Archie thought for a moment.

“Fair point.” he said glumly, deflating suddenly. “How are we going to get back? Maybe we should wait in the cellar till Riddick reverses whatever he’s done.”

“I’m not waiting in there!” said Derek. “We’re in the future now! Let’s at least go and see what it’s like.”

“I don’t want to be stuck in the future!”

“A five-minute walk around the village. That’s all I’m asking.”

Derek was already striding down the road.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” said Archie, but he hurried after Derek nonetheless.

As they walked they began to notice a distinct lack of cars on the road, even in the tiny village.

“People probably fly.” suggested Derek. “We should watch out for things flying over.”

“I don’t think they’re flying.” said Archie. “Look.”

As they rounded a corner, they came upon three cars parked in front of each other. The cars were of a distinctly archaic design.

“I’d say cars that look like that were popular sometime around 1970.” Archie added.

They stopped, staring in amazement.

“We’ve gone backwards in time.” said Derek.

“This is really bad.” said Archie.

“Why?”

“They put lead in petrol in 1970. We’re literally inhaling lead now, probably.”

“Oh, lead, get out of it!” Derek’s tone switched to one of enthusiastic imploring. “We’re in 1970! The Beatles are releasing their final album, like, now! This is incredible!”

“But how are we going to get back?” said Archie.

“We’ll go back to the cellar in a bit and wait for Riddick to fix his mistake. I just want to see a bit of 1970.”

For a while they walked around attempting to marvel at everything, but even Derek struggled a little. Aside from the cars and the lack of traffic, the visible differences weren’t striking. They passed several people in the course of walking around the town, one of whom raised an eyebrow at their modern clothing, but not even that really stood out to any great degree.

Finally they went back to the cellar and waited, in the dark, for Riddick to transport them back again.

“I’m hungry.” said Archie after they had sat in the dark for two hours .

“Well, we can’t get food.” said Derek. “They won’t accept our money.”

“This is worse than that time that bloke tried to blow up the entire world with his antigravity machine.” said Archie miserably.

Since they had no alternative, they continued to wait in the cellar, complaining bitterly to each other.

After dark the temperature dropped significantly.

“We could build a fire.” said Archie.

“No matches, no lighter.” said Derek. “I knew I shouldn’t have given up smoking.”

“Let’s go and see what’s in the rest of the house. Maybe there’s a box of matches.”

“We can’t even see anything now.”

“All the same. Worth a try.”

They rummaged about in the house, but found nothing useful.

For the rest of the night they tried lying on the cold floor, standing up and pacing around, and walking around outside, but nothing really helped with the cold.

They watched impatiently, standing outside the front door, as the sky slowly lightened, and finally the edge of the sun became visible over the horizon.

“I’m going to find a town.” said Derek. “I’m cold and hungry. You can stay here if you want.”

“No, I’m coming.” said Archie.

“We can find someone who seems a bit approachable, tell them we’re from the future and beg them for some food, in exchange for information. We can tell them what the future’s going to be like. That’s got to be worth something.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why not? I need to eat and warm up somehow.”

“Firstly, you’ll actually change the future if you go around telling people what’s going to happen. Secondly, they’ll never believe you.”

“They will believe me.” said Derek, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I switched it off. Still got 40% battery.”

“No.” said Archie.

“Yes.” said Derek.

“I don’t think we should do this.”

“Do you want to eat or don’t you?”

Archie pressed his lips together and made frustrated fists in the air, unable to quite decide what kind of gesture would appropriately express his feeling. Then he shook his head and said, “I could do with a nice mug of coffee.”

“There you go, then.” said Derek. “How’s your phone?”

“20% left.” said Archie.

“That’ll do.” said Derek.

They walked into the village, where they asked a passing farmer the way to the nearest town.

“Over yonder.” he said, pointing with the stem of a pipe. “‘Bout five mile.”

“Five miles!” said Archie as they walked in the direction the farmer had indicated.

“At least the walk’ll warm us up a bit.” said Derek. “Stop complaining.”

An hour and a half later they found themselves in a small town. A little café was already open, serving bacon rolls and mugs of coffee to a variety of council workers and assorted others.

A newspaper shop next to it displayed papers with the current date: June 3rd, 1970. The headlines were about labour disputes involving coal miners, the forthcoming election, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. They stared at it in amazement, then they turned to gazing longingly into the café.

“We’ve still not got any money.” said Archie.

“Leave it to me.” said Derek, and he stood quietly watching the smattering of people walking past.

When he saw a youngish-looking man, fashionably dressed in flares and what appeared to be a sheepskin jacket, he said, “Hey, can I ask you something, mate?”

“What?” said the man.

“Listen, we’re from the future.”

He began to pull his phone out of his pocket but then man uttered a vulgar expletive and walked off.

“I don’t think this is going to work.” said Archie, clapping his arms around himself in an effort to warm himself up.

“It’ll work.” said Derek. “We just need the right kind of bloke.”

“Or a woman.” said Archie.

“No.” said Derek. “Women are too practical. We need someone with his head in the clouds a bit. Anyway a woman’ll just think we’re dangerous nutcases.”

“I’m thinking that myself.” said Archie.

“Hey.” said Derek, and he nodded at a man who was approaching them, a little way off.

The man was young, perhaps late 20s, with a head of slightly floppy blond hair, and he wore a cotton jacket with corduroys.

“I like the cut of his gib.” said Archie.

“He seems harmless.” said Derek.

“Just what we need.”

“Maybe even a bit gormless.”

“Exactly. Perfect.”

“I think you should talk to him.” said Derek. “He’s more your type of person.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just do it. Show him your phone.”

“It’s down to 15%.” said Archie, taking his phone out of his jacket pocket.

“More than enough.” said Derek.

When the man drew almost level with them, Archie said, “Excuse me.”

The man stopped and looked at them expectantly. Then a look of surprise formed on his face, and he said to Archie, “Hey, nice jacket. Where did you get it?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Archie, “but first I have to explain something. You see, we’re from the future.”

“The future?” said the man, suitably surprised.

“Yes. In the future, we all carry portable communication and computing devices with us. This is mine. Look.”

Archie waved the phone in his face.

“Place an mp3 or something.” said Derek.

“Oh, yes.” said Archie. “Wait. I’ve got one downloaded.”

He opened an mp3 on his phone, and a voice began to speak.

“What the hell is that?” said Derek.

“It’s a speech about Austrian economics.” said Archie.

“I meant, play him some music.” said Derek.

“This is all I’ve got.”

But the phone had done the trick.

“That’s incredible.” said the man. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We’re from 2025.” said Derek. “In 2025, everyone has one of these.”

“Astonishing.” said the man. “Say, I’m Will. I’m an artist.”

Will extended his hand, and Archie and Derek shook it, one after the other.

“I’m Archie and this is Derek. We work together. We investigate amateur scientific inventions. The last one we investigated transported us accidentally fifty-five years backwards in time. We’re stuck now.”

“That’s awful.” said Will. “When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday.” said Derek. “And we haven’t eaten since then.”

“Oh, right.” said Will.

He seemed to think for a moment, then he said, “Look, I don’t know if you chaps are on the level or not, but that machine of yours is astonishing. If you want I’ll buy you breakfast, and you can tell me more about it.”

Archie and Derek broke into wide smiles.

“It’s a deal.” said Derek.

Soon they were drinking mugs of hot coffee and eating full English breakfasts, at Will’s expense, complete with bacon, sausages, beans, eggs and toast buttered with margarine. In return they showed Will the various games available on their phones, and tried to explain the normal function of mobile phones. He was soon completely absorbed in playing “Snakes”, while the other people in the café threw curious glances at them.

“Maybe we should try to keep this a bit more low-key.” said Archie nervously.

“This is the biggest score I’ve got so far.” said Will, jabbing at the phone.

“Listen, Will.” said Derek. “We need your help, mate. We’ve basically got to wait in a cellar for this bloke —”

“Dr. Riddick.” said Will absently.

“— yeah, him.” Derek agreed. “We’ve got to wait for him to transport us back. We need food, blankets, something to lie on at night.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can help you with all that.” said Will. “Damn! I almost did it again. One mistake and you’re done for.”

“In return we can tell you whatever you want to know about the future.” Archie chimed in.

“OK,” said Will, staring at the phone. “I just need to break three thousand first.”

Soon they had fitted out the basement with enough supplies to last a few days.

“Can’t be more than a day or so, I wouldn’t think.” said Derek.

“You’re assuming he actually has some way of transporting us back.” said Archie glumly.

“Of course he does.” said Derek, with a discernible note of uncertainty in his voice.

But the days wore on, and they remained stuck in 1970, afraid to leave the basement in case staying in the basement proved key to Riddick transporting them back to 2025.

“We’ve been gone now for four days.” said Archie glumly one evening, as they lay on mats staring at the ceiling, with a candle for light.

Neither of them had shaved in four days, and between them lay a bottle of wine, which they were rapidly working their way through, pouring it into mugs supplied by Will.

“Probably just some glitch.” said Derek, equally glumly. “He’ll have us back soon.”

“Anna must think I’ve died.” said Archie. “I need to get a message to her somehow.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know.” said Archie.

Two days later, with little change in their circumstances, Archie came up with a plan.

They were both still lying on the mats in the cellar floor, having gone out only briefly for a walk earlier in the day. Will had brought them food, including another bottle of wine, and also a small camping stove which they used to make coffee with instant coffee powder, a process which at first Archie had objected to on the grounds that instant coffee wasn’t really coffee, but in the end had succumbed to on the grounds that beggars can’t be choosers. Derek had also helpfully added, “Any port in a storm.”

“Anna and I went for a walk in about 2023.” said Archie. “Somewhere in Derbyshire. The Peak District. Place called Stannage, I think. I remember on the way we stopped to look at a stone circle. If I were to engrave a message on one of those stones, I think I’d see it, in the future.”

“Your plan is to deface an ancient monument?” said Derek.

“Only a mild defacement.” said Archie. “I haven’t got any better idea.”

“What are you going to say to yourself?”

“I’ll say, AS—those are my initials—do not visit PR in 2025.”

“Do you think that’ll be enough?”

“Probably. It’s worth a try. If it doesn’t work, I can go back and enlarge upon the theme.”

“Then what will happen to us, now, if you manage to convince yourself not to visit Peter Riddick in the future?”

“Well, we won’t have gone anywhere near his infernal machine, so we won’t be here anymore.”

Derek thought for a while, sipping wine.

“What do you think?” said Archie.

“Let’s fire up the stove and have another coffee. It helps pass the time. Anyway I’m getting a bit chilly. It’s surprising how cold it can get in June, if you’re living in an unheated cellar and basically sleeping on the cold floor.”

“I mean, about the plan?”

“It’s just—we’ve gone through a whole bunch of experiences in the past few days, right?”

“True.”

“So,” said Derek slowly, “are you saying all this stuff will never have happened?”

“I’d imagine so.”

“Well, how can that be?”

“What do you mean?”

“By your reasoning, it’s possible to change the past. So, for example, you could go back in time and kill Hitler.”

“In theory.”

“Then the concentration camps would never have happened.”

“Not those concentration camps, no. Others, maybe.”

“But then a ton of people suffered horribly. They had real experiences. Horrible experiences, that went on for years in many cases. I just don’t see how it’s possible to make something not happen, that did actually happen, if people have already experienced it. I mean, those experiences were real. They happened, and they were powerful, and they went on a long time.”

“Look,” said Archie, rising to a sitting position and lighting the camping stove, “I don’t pretend to know the details of how all this works on a technical level. Riddick built the time machine, not me. As far as I can see, if I send a message to my future self, telling my future self not to tangle with him, I don’t see how we can end up here. That’s all I know.”

“Fair enough, mate.” said Derek. “We’ll give it a go if you want.”

“Tomorrow.” said Archie.

“Tomorrow.”

The following day they awoke early, shivering, as usual.

“I think I can see daylight.” said Archie, eyeing the faint glimmer of sunlight emerging from the cellar steps, while groping around for the box of matches that Will had given them.

“Today’s the day, then.” said Derek.

“Today’s the day.” said Archie. “Last day we’ll spend in this godforsaken hole.”

After lighting the candle they ate a breakfast of what Archie dismissively called “fake supermarket bread” and cheese, washed down with instant coffee.

Then, they staggered up the stairs.

“You smell awful.” said Archie pleasantly.

“So do you.” said Derek. “Like a bloody goat, mate.”

When they opened the front door of the dilapidated house, they froze in shock. There, standing in the road, was Archie’s old Alfa Romeo.

“How did that get here?” said Derek.

“I’ve a horrible feeling.” said Archie.

“What?”

“What if Riddick can’t find a way to get us back home, so he’s decided to just send us our car as the next best option?”

Derek made a scoffing sound, then grew serious and sober.

“Do you really think that could be it?”

“I don’t see any other explanation.”

“Doesn’t matter.” said Derek. “This just means we can drive to your stone circle.”

“We’ll attract attention with a car that looks like this.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t really care at this point.”

“Me neither.” said Archie, and they got into the car.

They drove off through the village, and it was only when they reached the main road that their tired minds realised something had changed.

Archie grasped Derek’s arm suddenly, causing him to almost swerve off the road.

“Derek, these cars are modern!” he said.

Derek’s eyes were widening. They had both noticed the same thing at the same time.

“How is it possible?” said Derek. “You haven’t done anything yet.”

“Never mind.” said Archie. “I need to see Anna. She must be going frantic. Drive me home.”

“All right.” said Derek. “Then I’m going home for a shower and a supermarket cottage pie.”

Soon they were outside the house were Archie lived with his girlfriend. Derek watched as he bolted out of the car and ran to the front door. By coincidence, Anna happened to open the door just as he arrived at it, on her way out somewhere.

Archie wrapped his arms around her.

“I’ve missed you so much!” he said.

“Steady on, tiger.” said Anna. “It’s only been three hours. What’s got into you?”

Archie pulled away from her, holding her shoulders in his hands and staring wildly into her eyes.

“Three hours?” he said.

“What’s happened to you?” she said, suddenly alarmed. “You’ve practically got a beard.”

Derek shook his head, smiling, unable to hear their conversation but happy to see them reunited, and drove off back home.

The following day, a shaved and refreshed Archie and Derek met at their little rented office to discuss their plans.

“We need to go and see Riddick.” said Archie.

“Now, hang on a minute.” said Derek.

Archie held up a hand to silence his objections.

“We won’t go into his house. We won’t go anywhere near the time machine. We’ll simply have a word with him, at his front door.”

“Oh, I’ll have a word with him all right.” said Derek grimly.

“I wonder where he lives now.”

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t live at the cottage. We’ve just come from there.”

“Fair point.” said Derek. “Let’s see if we can look him up on the internet.”

After a few minutes of searching, they found him. Riddick now appeared to be living in a large farmhouse only a few miles from the cottage he’d owned in their previous timeline. He had a website where he proudly demonstrated his time-related research, none of which seemed particularly interesting.

“Let’s go and pay him a visit then.” said Archie.

“Yeah.” said Derek grimly. “Let’s pay him a visit.”

“No violence.” said Archie.

Derek harumphed irritably.

Soon they were on their way to Peter Riddick’s farmhouse. When they got there, they marched up to the door and Derek banged loudly on it.

After a few shorts moments, Riddick appeared. He was wearing a tweed jacket a shirt with a bow tie and his complexion seemed slightly more tanned than previously. In fact, he appeared altogether healthier in general than he had previously.

“I’m not interested in your religion, sorry.” he said.

“Don’t you remember us?” said Archie.

“If you’ve been here before, you know better than to keep trying to convert me.” said Riddick. “I’m absolutely sick of it.”

“We’re not hoovers.” said Archie. “We investigate scientific innovations. Haven’t you built a time machine?”

Riddick’s expression changed, and he smiled self-deprecatingly.

“Well, I’m trying to.” he said. “Did Will send you? I’m happy to discuss my latest research with you, but there’s no working time machine just yet, I’m afraid.”

Archie and Derek exchanged baffled glances.

“We need to figure out what’s going on here.” said Derek.

“Amen.” said Archie.

“Would you like to come in for a tour of my lab?”

“Your time machine doesn’t work?” said Archie.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then we definitely would.” said Archie.

Riddick, it emerged, now lived in a rather luxurious, immaculately-renovated former farmhouse where he had assembled an impressive laboratory in what had once been a cow shed. He proudly showed them his experiments, none of which really amounted to much, but he evidently felt he was making progress, albeit slight.

“May I ask a slightly personal question?” said Archie.

“Ask away.” said Riddick.

“How did you afford all this?”

“Oh, my benefactor funded it.” he said. “I thought you knew him? Will Asquith-Smythe. Extremely wealthy man. I gather he had the foresight to invest in Bitcoin, when he was already nearly 70 years old. Not many men have such an extraordinary ability to keep up with modern developments at such an age. But he’s a remarkable individual.”

“Derek,” said Archie, “did we mention Bitcoin at all to Will?”

“Yeah.” said Derek. “We did.”

“I think let’s go and have a word with Will Asquith-Smythe.” said Archie.

“Yeah.” said Derek. “Could do with a bit of funding ourselves.”

The little table was surrounded by potted plants and upon the wall hung numerous old illustrations from long-since obsolescent popular science magazines.

The cafe was supposed to have closed hours ago, but apparently, for Trevithick, it was always open.

More than twenty years had passed since Pip had sat in Trevithick’s lectures, and Pip had once been one of Trevithick’s most promising graduate students, until financial necessity borne out of the appearance of three small additions to his family had compelled him to seek out more lucrative climes.

“Well?” said Trevithick, as Pip continued to leaf through the old children’s chemistry book.

“Yes, I agree.” said Pip. “It’s quite a startling change.”

“What do you notice?”

“The 1950s book was a lot more dangerous, for a start. This is sanitised by comparison. This one —” he clapped his left hand over the older of the two books lying on the table “— has firework recipes in it. It freely used explosive chlorates, toxic metal salts and all kinds of things that definitely wouldn’t be considered suitable for children today. This one —” he laid his right hand over the 1960s book “—has none of that, and what’s more, every chapter ends with exam questions.”

“You see,” said Trevithick, “the culture of the children’s chemistry book has fundamentally shifted. In the 1950s, we see that the aim of the book is to feed eager minds with scientific information, even at the expense of perfect safety. By the 1960s, the aim is to enable them to pass exams. The subject material is assumed to be boring in their eyes, which is why it’s all broken down into coloured rectangles and digestible bullet points and what-have-you.”

“What are you driving at with this?” said Pip, an amused half-smile on his face.

“This is just one small example.” said the old man, gravely. “I believe a fundamental shift took place in society. The shift was brought about by the events of the two world wars. The question was posed: why were the wars even possible? The answer was that, if one goes back to around 1900, the people of the European Continent were driven by deep and serious-minded concepts. They believed in God, Queen and country, honour, courage, sacrifice, the sanctity of the family, and so on and so forth. They expected to obtain their reward in the afterlife.

“That had to be done away with, in order to bring about lasting peace. People’s lives had to be ruled by only material considerations. Exam results, income, gross domestic product. The search for knowledge was no longer a kind of holy quest for truth; all activities had to be justified via their immediate material benefits.

“Thus, we find that vast quantities of transcendent thought, freely indulged in by practically every major scientist prior to 1950, were simply suppressed. Cast aside as mere pseudoscientific speculations, at odds with the new religion of materialism. And at this point —” Trevithick stared into Pip’s eyes and jabbed the table with his forefinger “—progress in fundamental physics essentially ceased.”

“Ceased?” said Pip. “How can you say that? What about the transistor, the computer, the laser and so on?”

“Oh, technology marched on. But technology isn’t fundamental. Technology is only an elaboration and refinement of ideas that were discovered long before, at the end of the golden era of science. The first practical semiconductor diode was invented by Pickard in 1906. Stimulated emission was predicted by Einstein in 1916. The later refinements and new uses of these developments were new feats of engineering, not of fundamental physics.”

“You’re rejecting the low-hanging fruit explanation for why progress in fundamental physics has slowed?”

“Exactly. It’s not that scientists took the low-hanging fruit and then progress stopped. It’s that progress was deliberately halted by the promotion of an ideology that never made any real sense. Any alternative point of view was ridiculed in order to suppress it.”

“All this is a bit rich coming from a man who told me to avoid, at all costs, involving myself in debates over materialism, dualism, monism and idealism. You’ve always maintained that moral philosophy was the only kind of philosophy worthy of the name.”

“I was wrong.”

“And what exactly do you propose has been suppressed?”

“Consider this, Pip. Let us take materialism seriously for a moment, in order to expose its flaws, in the same way that Einstein took Galilean universal time seriously in order to expose its contradictions.

“According to materialism then, all thoughts and concepts are assembled in the brain. This means your concept of space and time must be assembled in the brain, otherwise how could you perceive space and time? But then the brain itself is only an object in this space and time, which we are saying the brain has conjured up. In what sense, then, is the brain real?”

“You’re questioning the existence of matter, on the ground that our perception of matter is all assembled in our minds?”

“Matter as a concept makes no real sense.” said Trevithick. “It’s riddled with contradictions. We cannot conceive of space as infinite in extent, yet we can’t imagine an end to it either. We say that everything is made up of something smaller than itself, but we can’t imagine an infinite regress of smaller and smaller things. We say that particles in space must have exact positions at a given moment, but we can’t specify an exact position without an infinite string of digits, and the very concept of a moment in time relies upon being able to slice time into infinitely small segments, which we also can’t imagine.

“No, Pip, the whole thing is a nonsense. I realised several years ago that I had to rebuild the whole of physics on the basis of human perception, not on materialism. The heart of science is not physical matter; the heart of science is the experiment, and the results it yields.”

Pip was beginning to wonder if Trevithick hadn’t lost his mind. He was a little young to be suffering from senile dementia, but cases do occur in younger people all too frequently, even in people with as formerly sharp a mind as Trevithick.

“I’d be very surprised if you can actually get anywhere with this.” said Pip. “For one thing, you’re not a scientist, Professor, with respect. You’re a philosopher, who has almost entirely focused on moral philosophy. On top of that, one could argue that monistic idealism held Continental scientists back, while British scientists, being more practically-minded, forged ahead.”

Trevithick smiled, and proceeded to close the children’s chemistry books and put them away in the leather satchel he carried around with him. Then he brought out a strange device. The device consisted of a small black box, with a sliding switch at one side. In the middle was a large round button, covered with a transparent plastic shield.

“What’s that?” said Pip, warily.

“This,” said Trevithick, “is the most powerful weapon ever devised. So far I’ve tested the principle only on gerbils, and a dog, and myself and a few others, but I should now like to propose a more exhaustive test.”

“Gerbils? Dogs? Aren’t you a strict vegetarian?”

“Oh no, I gave that up several years ago, Pip. The fact is, death is hardly ever pleasant, so I can’t see what difference it makes if animals die swiftly so that I can eat them, rather that enduring drawn-out deaths from old age or in the jaws of other animals.”

Pip found his anxiety rising rapidly. The man with whom he had been conversing clearly wasn’t quite the same man he had known for the past two decades. This version of Trevithick had apparently undergone numerous significant changes and was now, therefore, something of an unknown quantity.

“Oh, you needn’t worry.” said Trevithick pleasantly. “They didn’t suffer. It’s an entirely new form of weapon. It is based not on dissolution, but on temporary reconstitution.”

“What is it, a bomb?”

“Good Heavens, no. Nothing like that. My work led me to profound contemplation of one of life’s greatest mysteries: namely, the mystery of why you are you and I am me. One must start from the point of view I’ve already outlined, that the physical world is a construction of the mind.”

“But it isn’t a construction of the mind.” Pip objected, eyeing the device nervously, while inwardly wondering if this wasn’t some kind of psychological experiment devised by Trevithick just to see what he’d do. “If the physical world were a construction of the mind, we’d be able to walk through walls.”

“Not at all.” said Trevithick. “I didn’t claim that the world is a construction of our conscious minds. It is not; at least not in the sense you’re imagining. Consider mathematics, for instance. It is quite clearly a construction of the mind. In fact, it is a construction of the conscious mind. The history of its construction is well-documented. But you can’t break the rules of mathematics at will. Or rather, you can, but then the entire edifice no longer stands. It collapses under the weight of the slightest contradiction. So it is with the material universe. You may imagine that you are able to walk through walls, but then nothing else will make sense to you, and you will be declared insane by the rest of us.”

“Just tell me what it does.” said Pip.

Trevithick smiled again, mysteriously.

From outside the window came the sound of shouting; almost screaming.

“Look out of the window.” said Trevithick.

Pip peered out at the street below. Two policemen were beating a man viciously with truncheons.

“What do you suppose he did wrong, Pip, my boy?”

“Must have said something he shouldn’t have.” said Pip.

“And do you think it’s right that a man should be beaten to within an inch of death just for his words?”

“If you’re going to get political, I’m going to have to leave.” said Pip.

“That’s always been our problem, Pip. Lack of courage. Do you think either of us would have enjoyed conventional reasonably-well-paid careers if we’d said what we actually think?”

“I’d like to continue enjoying a reasonably-well-paid career.” said Pip.

“No.” said Trevithick. “Now is the time to take a stand.”

“I’m not taking any stands. They’re probably listening to us.”

“I’m quite sure they’re listening to us.” said Trevithick. “Every single word we utter is processed by powerful machines and scanned for signs of sedition.”

“Then why not reign it in, old man? It’s all right for you. You might not be long for this world, but I’ve probably got to carry on living for another three or four decades yet, and perhaps more.”

“Do me a favour, will you?”

Pip had already stood up and was on the verge of leaving. He was shaking slightly, and the owner of the cafe, who flitted about behind the counter at the other side of the room, polishing glasses and wiping down surfaces, was looking at him curiously.

“What?”

“Put this on.”

Trevithick took a white headband from his satchel and held it out.

“Whatever for?”

“Well, I’ll have this one.” said Trevithick, and he put it on himself, then rummaged about in his satchel and produced another one for Pip.

“Professor,” said Pip, “I’ve always respected you. And respectfully, I think you might have lost the plot. What about if I walk you home and you try to rest yourself in bed a bit?”

“Put the headband on, Pip.” said Trevithick. “You wouldn’t want me to get agitated, now, would you? A dangerous lunatic like me?”

“Then you’ll allow me to take you home?”

“We’ll leave as soon as you put it on.”

Pip snatched the headband and fitted it on his head.

“There.” said Trevithick. “And now, I intend to activate this device outside the Houses of Parliament.”

“What?” said Pip.

“You heard me. I will create a power vacuum into which some bunch of more moral leaders will flow, and if not, I shall scupper them as well.”

Pip had turned pale.

“Don’t look so scared.” said Trevithick, and he slid the switch at the side of the device, causing the round button in the middle to light up red. Then he flipped back the transparent lid.

Then, he rose till he was half-standing, slid the window of the café open and shouted at the police below, “What are you waiting for? I’m about to overthrow the government.”

The three policemen were still standing around the fallen body of the man they had beaten, occasionally kicking him. A policewoman stood off to the side, arms folded, laughing and joking with the three men. When they heard Trevithick shouting from the third-floor window of the cafe, they looked up and immediately made for the entrance of the building.

Trevithick watched as the beaten man began to crawl and hop away, his face covered in blood, but still mercifully alive.

“What have you done?” said Pip, tearing at his hair.

“The question is not what I have done, but what you will do.” said Trevithick, calmly. “I assure you, these so-called police will not harm a hair on our heads. But I cannot say the same of any police you may encounter in the street, if you run. Undoubtedly a bunch of them are already on their way here.”

“Oh God.” groaned Pip, and he sat down heavily on the wooden seat where he’d spent the last hour.

The barista was staring at these unfolding events with his mouth wide open. A young woman appeared from a doorway behind the counter, perhaps intending to assist with cleaning the machines before closing up for the evening. The man muttered something to her hastily and they both shot a frightened glance at Pip and Trevithick, then disappeared with enormous haste.

The entrance door burst open quite suddenly, and the four police officers appeared.

“You’re both under arrest.” shouted the woman, and the men advanced menacingly, batons drawn.

Trevithick hit the glowing red button with the palm of his hand. The button flashed green before returning to red. The expressions on the police officers’ faces abruptly changed. At first they appeared confused and bewildered, then one of the men began to laugh, another wandered wide-eyed to the window to look outside, the third sat down in the middle of the floor, and the woman began to perform a kind of dance reminiscent of a slow ballet, whirling around and singing, quietly at first, but with increasing vigour, and with an appearance of ecstasy.

“What’ve you done to them?” said Pip, so consumed with fear that he was hardly able to breathe.

“Absolutely nothing.” said Trevithick. “I merely temporarily displaced their consciousnesses. They are all that they were before, and more besides. I daresay they’ll wander home after they’ve got over the shock.”

He slid the button at the side of the box back, and the red light of the circular button in the middle of the device went out. Then he flipped the transparent plastic lid back into place.

Pip surveyed the confused officers. He went to the one who was staring out the window and said, “Are you all right?”

The officer jumped, as if startled out of his thoughts, but then half-turned towards Pip and said, “Yeah, fine.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be arresting people or something?” said Pip, his heart in his mouth, all too aware that the officers could at any moment recall the task at hand and commence beating the living daylights out of himself and Trevithick.

The policeman gave a hollow laugh.

“That’s a waste of time.” he said, still staring vacantly out of the window. “I think I’d like to go and live in the hills. Maybe I’ll become a farmer or something.”

“A minute ago you were going to arrest us, weren’t you?”

Pip was so scared he barely managed to get the words out, but he was determined to get to the bottom of the matter.

“A lot’s happened since then, mate.” said the officer.

“Like what?”

The officer paused, thinking about something.

“I don’t know.” he said finally.

Then the officer turned to fully face Pip and he laid a hand on Pip’s shoulder.

“Go in peace, friend.” he said.

Trevithick was watching with an amused grin.

“Right,” he said, “I think a visit to the Parliament.”

And he set off towards the door, carrying the satchel into which he’d now replaced the device.

Pip hurried after him.

“I don’t know what you’ve done to them but you can’t just wipe the minds of the entire government.” he said.

“I’m not wiping anyone’s minds.” said Trevithick.

“Revolutions are dangerous!” Pip persisted. “They hardly ever work out well. Look at the Russian Revolution for example—seemed like it was going OK at first, then the Bolsheviks took over and they ended up with seventy years of suffering and hardship.”

“That won’t happen in this case.”

They emerged onto the street. The People’s Tower was visible in the distance, broadcasting a variety of supposedly spiritual and uplifting messages every hour on the hour.

“What does the device actually do?”

“I haven’t time to explain just at the moment.” said Trevithick.

“Let’s stop and talk it over, Professor.”

“No, thank you. I’ve had quite enough of these people scaring everyone and telling us all what to think.”

For half an hour they debated the matter, Pip periodically having to lower his voice for fear of attracting unwanted attention, but Trevithick refused to be drawn into outright argument, and only calmly asserted that he was going ahead as planned.

When they had very nearly reached the Parliament building, Pip got in front of Trevithick, forcing him to stop.

“I can’t let you do this.” he said.

“You can’t stop me.” said Trevithick.

“Yes, I can.” said Pip, and he pulled the absurd white headband that Trevithick was wearing directly off his head. Then he removed the headband from his own head.

“Are you willing to sacrifice both of our lives for your dangerous experiment?” he said.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” said Trevithick, taking the device from his bag and sliding the switch.

“You’re surely not going to do it?” said Pip. “You’ll scramble your own brains. And mine!”

He looked nervously behind Trevithick. Two armed security guards were approaching with determined expressions on their faces.

Trevithick flipped back the protective plastic cover.

“Prepare to be amazed.” he said, and he pressed the glowing red button.

The next thing of which Pip was definitely aware was that he had an enormous mouth and was attempting to open it as widely as possible so that his mother, a blackbird, might drop a worm into it.

This struck him as entirely normal, since he had no recollection of his previous existence as a human being. However, it was still the entity known as Pip which was experiencing life as a nestling, and not someone or something else, in-keeping with Trevithick’s theories.

A little later on that year he learned to fly, after hopping around on the ground for a few days.

The winter was hard, but the next year, after vigorously defending a tree with loud whistling, he produced a brood of his own, helping to feed both his partner as she sat on their eggs, and later, their nestlings.

In total he lived for three years, before being eaten by a fox.

He then found himself a horse on the plains of Mongolia, although, being a horse, he had little idea that he was actually a horse or that it was possible to be anything else. He knew only that he was concerned with eating grass and relations between himself and the other horses. This went on for 22 years.

He experienced a number of spells as various insects and undefinable creatures perhaps unknown to science, before his consciousness abruptly reconstituted the human form known as Pip Lenfield, standing outside the British Parliament building.

All memories of his intervening lives were immediately lost, due to the lack of any mechanism for transferring memories from one life to the next, but he felt distinctly different, his mind irrevocably altered by his many new experiences.

“What do you think?” said Trevithick.

Pip’s mouth worked itself open and closed repeatedly, but no sound came out.

“Exactly.” said Trevithick. “I’ve done this five times and it’s always surprising.”

“What just happened to me?” said Pip, regaining control of his vocal chords.

“There isn’t really the vocabulary to describe it, in modern science as it stands at the moment. Let’s just say, your soul went for a walkabout.”

Remembering the approaching security guards, Pip turned to look for them, but one of them was sitting on the pavement, smiling, while the other was gazing at his own hands, turning them around at the wrists.

“The people in the parliament …” said Pip.

“Yes, they’ve had their own little voyages.” said Trevithick.

Soon the politicians began to wander out, laughing and chatting animatedly.

“What exactly do you mean?” said Pip. “Explain it to me. I’m begging you.”

“You’ve just spent somewhere between ten and two hundred years living life as a succession of different creatures. You see, Pip, our memories aren’t what make us who we are, neither our bodies, nor even our personalities as such. Each of us has their own unique point of view from which we construct our reality. The thing that’s unique to each of us is the ‘I’, the thing that experiences. I’ve found a way of temporarily shifting consciousness out of the human form and into other forms, which I suppose would ordinarily only happen after death, although I’ve been unable to prove that.”

“You mean, I might have spent a century as a cat or an elephant or something?”

“Precisely.” said Trevithick. “And so has everyone within a radius of nearly half a mile. I’ve found this tends to make people rather more mellow in their outlook. Gives them a certain perspective.”

“But what if someone spent two hundred years being a succession of violent predators? What then?” said Pip wildly.

“Very unlikely that would ever happen.” said Trevithick, but at that moment they were disturbed by the sound of smashing glass and an unearthly scream from a window at the top of the parliament building.

They turned to see the Prime Minister, Quentin Pomelroy, leaning out of the window.

“I will eat you all!” he roared.

“Good Heavens!” said Trevithick.

“He’s lost his mind.” said Pip. “This is your fault.”

As they watched he jumped, landing below with a loud smack, but then staggered to his feet and ran directly towards them.

“Now listen here, my good fellow.” said Trevithick. “You’re confused and of course you want answers.”

Pomelroy leapt at him and sank his teeth into Trevithick’s neck before either of them had time to process their thoughts.

“Professor!” shouted Pip, but it was clearly too late to help Trevithick. Blood was spurting from his neck, and Pomelroy was now covered in it.

Pip grabbed the device from Trevithick’s dying hands, then leapt back as Pomelroy fell to the floor, a policeman apparently having hit him hard over the head with a truncheon.

The policeman watched him fall, then smiled affably.

“Looks like we’re going to need a new Prime Minister, then.” he said.

Politicians continued to emerge from the building, but gradually the laughter and chatter was replaced by screaming and inhuman roars. They, along with people from the surrounding area, including a good number of tourists, had divided themselves into predators and prey.

Pip watched in horror as the Home Secretary devoured the face of the Minister of Public Health.

He slid the switch on the box, flipped back the plastic cover and placed his hand flat over the button, ready to press it.

Although he couldn’t remember any of the lives he had experienced the last time it was pressed, he had a strong feeling he had endured something very long and arduous.

After some moments of hesitation, during which time the violence unfolding in front of him only worsened, he placed the machine carefully down on the ground, and he turned and ran.

Was he a man or a mouse? Nothing could be gained by fleeing. Eventually he would be drawn back here again, faced with the same problem again. He had to know what was behind that door, and why it intrigued him so.

The door was surprisingly ornate, made of thick wood, perhaps oak. What was it doing here, below ground? He placed his hand on the handle, his heart in his mouth.

Now or never. Do or die.

He slowly turned the handle until the latch was fully retracted, then he paused. The terror was unreal in its extravagance. He had never felt anything like this. But, he told himself, it was entirely irrational. There was no need to fear whatever was on the other side.

What was the worst thing that could possibly be in there? Some deranged junky? Industrial waste? He would check quickly and then return the way he had come.

His hand almost seemed to make the decision for him. It yanked the door open suddenly, while his mind was still grappling with the fear.

He gasped.

In front of him stood … nothing. An inky blackness, darker than night.

From his pocket he took the little gadget that his aunt had given him as a birthday present. The tiny flashlight, the size of a matchbox, was capable of outputting even UV, but it was its ability to cast a strong visible light for (according to the instructions) 20 minutes, that interested him now.

He shone the light into the darkness. It seemed to make no difference. He could only think that the space beyond the door must be vast, or else the walls painted with some new-fangled anti-reflective paint.

He stepped forwards.

“Hello?” he shouted, inwardly cursing himself for allowing the fear to creep into his voice. “Is anyone there?”

Behind him, the door quietly shut itself. He immediately tried the handle, but it seemed to be locked.

Now he swore out loud.

For what seemed like an eon, he pounded the door, twisting the handle every which way, even kicking the door with his foot and slamming it with his shoulder.

Eventually he had to give up. The door was extremely strong and thick.

The effort of attacking the door had caused his fear to diminish slightly, but not much.

He had to think clearly. Formulate a plan.

There had to be another way out.

He began to walk slowly forwards into the yawning abyss, fruitlessly shining the light from the torch, which was immediately eaten up by the darkness.

The space seemed enormous. Try as he might, he couldn’t find another wall, much less a door.

“How can all this be underneath an ordinary road?” he asked himself, out loud, in the hope of calming his frayed nerves.

He had the feeling of being somewhere that he absolutely was not supposed to be, as though by entering the chamber he had committed an unforgivable blasphemy.

Then he remembered that even many major cities do have vast cave networks underneath them: Rome, Mexico City, Budapest, Maastricht.

He stepped slowly forwards, his eyes straining for the faintest light and his ears for the slightest sound, and gradually he began to think he could actually hear something. Slowly the sound became louder and louder, until there could be no doubt.

Coming from the very depths of the cavernous space was a low monstrous chattering, as if dozens of grotesque enormous beasts were … he hesitated to use the word even inside his own head … but it sounded as though they were conversing.

He froze and listened intently. What could possibly make that noise? The horrible cacophony was unambiguously animalistic and bestial, but it also sounded terrifyingly structured.

Demonic. It sounded like a nest of demons.

At this realisation, his blood froze, and he struggled to catch his breath.

What if every piece of superstitious nonsense he had ever heard on the topic was in fact true? What if demons did in fact roam the Earth, and here he had stumbled upon a whole legion of them?

He thought of turning back the way he had come, but which way was backwards now? In every direction he saw only darkness.

Then his heart almost stopped, as he realised one of the things seemed to be separating itself from the others and lumbering towards him.

“Oh, God!” he groaned, his mouth so dry and his throat so constricted that he could hardly make the words come out. “Please … no …”

But appeals to a God in which he, in any case, did not believe, proved fruitless. The thing was making a bee-line for him.

Then, almost as if emerging from his own lips, a deep demonic voice slowly rumbled “Oh, no.” in slow, deep, drawn-out tones.

They were mocking him! Had they already taken possession of his body?

Pete, a large and powerfully-built man, practically squeaked in alarm, his free hand feeling his throat as though he suspected some demonic entity to be physically attached to it.

At last he saw it: a shadowy, repulsively indistinct figure covered in black hair, shuffling closer and closer.

“No …” he gasped through tightly-constricted vocal chords.

Then, in a shattering final confirmation that these were in fact demons and that they had in truth been waiting for him all along, the beast, in a voice as low as the growling of a panther and with drawn-out syllables torturous in their slowness, uttered the words: “Hello Peter.”

He screamed.

From somewhere was the pounding beat of an idiotic popular song.

“Pete!” said a voice.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and swivelled around, terrified, to see the alarmed face of his wife, Karen.

“It’s every night now!” she said.

“Dear God!” he exclaimed, and he collapsed back onto the pillow.

“Was it the same dream again?” she asked.

“I went into …. I don’t know, a sewer or something, and … there was this room … and it was …. it was full of demons.” he gasped.

She put her head on his chest and stroked his arm reassuringly.

“We’ve got to find out what’s causing this.” she said. “This isn’t normal, Petey.”

The fear in his eyes turned to anger as he fixed his gaze on the ceiling.

“That ruddy piece of filth!” he shouted suddenly. “What time is it, darling?”

“It’s half-past two.” said Karen.

“Half-past bloody two!” shouted Pete. “I’m going to rip his head off!”

As he pulled his dressing gown on he continued ranting: “No wonder I’m having nightmares. Can’t get through a single night without that feckless womble playing his cretinous music at full volume.”

“Be careful.” said Karen, a worried expression on her face.

“I’ll be careful, all right.” said Pete with an anger that lent a certain ambiguity to the words, as he ran out through the bedroom door.

Pete ran up the uncarpeted wooden staircase, uncaring about the noise of his footsteps at such an hour, and pounded on Llama’s door. When Llama didn’t answer, he shouted, “I know you’re in there. Open up or I’ll smash this door down.”

Finally Llama answered.

“What’s your problem?” he said, curtly.

Llama was thin and wiry, and wore only a sleeveless denim jacket, revealing a large number of poorly-executed tattoos. Curly hair cascaded onto his shoulders, and his teeth were absolutely rotten. His pupils were dilated, and he was quite obviously as high as a kite.

“I’ve asked you time and time again to turn down that music in the middle of the night when people are trying to sleep!” said Pete, banging the door frame for emphasis.

“What the hell is up with you?” said Llama, eyeing Pete’s exhausted face in surprise.

“What’s up with me is I can’t—get—any—bloody—sleep!” shouted Pete.

Llama laughed in his face.

“Go back to your hag of a wife, old man. I haven’t time for this.”

He made to shut the door, but Pete pushed it violently open, sending Llama reeling.

“I’m going to wring your stupid little neck.” shouted Pete, but Llama, feeling hastily behind his back, fumbling in his intoxicated state, pulled out a knife, the blade flicking out and locking into position.

“You might want to rethink that.” said Llama.

Pete stared furiously at him, incandescent with rage, but decided the issue wasn’t worth getting stabbed over. Instead, he turned and stormed off.

“I’m calling the police about this.” he said.

“Do it.” said Llama, laughing madly. “I’m sure your noise reports are their top priority, my man.”

Llama insisted on playing his music on full blast for another hour, just to make a point, during which time Pete and Karen discussed moving somewhere else.

“We can’t afford it.” said Karen.

“These nightmares!” said Pete, pressing his hand to his forehead. “You’ve no idea …”

“I know, I know.” said Karen, soothingly. Then she said, softly, “Pete, don’t you think you should consider, just consider, seeing a psychologist?”

“Are you saying I’m mad?” said Pete sharply.

“Of course not, you idiot.” said Karen pleasantly. “I’m just saying, I’m not sure that nutter’s music is what’s causing your nightmares.”

“I’m not mad.” said Pete.

The following morning, Pete put on a suit to go to work. As he adjusted his tie, he looked at his exhausted face in the mirror. His face was pale and heavily-lined and there were dark jowly patches under his eyes. He had lost most of his hair several years ago, and the black fringe that remained was fast turning grey. He looked considerably older than his forty years, and he wasn’t sure why Karen was even still with him, especially since his mood was mostly foul.

Office work wasn’t really Pete’s thing, but in theory it would soon pay well if only he could manage to concentrate on it. The real problems had started when Llama had moved in above the flat they’d spent all their savings on, and a year after that, the nightmares had begun.

In two years, he’d aged ten years, easily.

He knew that if he carried on like this, the future wouldn’t be bright.

When he’d finished feeling sorry for himself, he made his way out of the door. Karen was already away, working her shift at the hospital.

As he was locking the door behind him, the girl across the corridor popped her head out of her door.

“Oh, hey!” she said. “Pete, I’m sorry to ask, but do you have any stevia?”

“Any what?” he said.

“Stevia.” she said. “You know … like, it’s a sweetener. For my teas. Karen normally has it.”

“Does she?”

“Yeah, usually. Only if it’s not too much trouble.”

“OK.” said Pete, and he unlocked the door again.

Mia was a pleasant enough girl, as far as he could tell, but somehow very annoying. He couldn’t even exactly say what annoyed him about her, but the nonsense she talked didn’t help.

She followed him into the flat and he rummaged about in the kitchen cupboards.

“We’ve got sugar.” he said.

“I never eat sugar.” she said, very seriously. “It’s a powerful toxin.”

“Really?” he said, half-heartedly, still rummaging.

“Yeah, if you’ve been taking that, you need to detoxify. I have some herbs that can help.”

“Don’t you have to get work at that … crystal … gizmo magic shop you work at, or whatever it is?”

“Oh, we’re not opening till ten now.” she said. “Lara says it aligns with our chakras better.”

“Very wise.” said Pete. “Got to get the chakras aligned and what-not.”

“Thanks.” said Mia.

He turned to look at her, holding the stevia.

She was nineteen years old and had straggly blonde hair littered with ribbons and flowers. Irony, sarcasm and indirection of any kind in general was completely lost on her. In a way, he envied her simplicity.

“Bingo.” said Pete, faking a brief comic smile.

“Thank you ever so much.” said Mia. “Listen, if you’ve got a minute I’ll give you some tea that’ll help get the sugar out of your system. Also it tones the immune system, and detoxifies generally.”

“That’s really not necessary.” said Pete, as they walked out through the door.

“Pete,” said Mia, suddenly turning and regarding him with a firm, grave expression, “I don’t mean to pry but I can see you’re exhausted. I’d really like to help you. I’d like you to give you some tea. I really think it’ll help you.”

He checked his watch. The last tea she had foisted on him had tasted like something passed out of a badger’s kidneys.

“Well, OK then.” he said.

She beckoned him into her flat.

Mia’s flat, where she lived alone, had been purchased for her by her parents. It was filled with crystals, dangling glittering things, holders for incense, incense sticks, and bottles and packets of various nostrums and resins.

“Have you got anything that helps with sleep?” he asked her.

“Sleep? Oh, of course. Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“Just a lot of nightmares.” he said.

“I should put you in touch with my friend.” she said, as she looked through her cupboards. “I think of him as almost a friend anyway. He’s ancient. Even older than you. Must about about sixty or something.”

“As old as that?”

She found the packet she was looking for and put it down on a breakfast bar that separate the kitchen from the living space.

“Yeah, he does research into dreams. His name’s Peter too, actually. He buys nearly all of our medium-sized amethysts.”

“Oh, right.” said Pete.

Clearly this other Peter was just as dotty as Mia.

“He’s a proper scientist.” said Mia, as if divining his thoughts with an uncharacteristic flash of insight. “He’s working on this machine. I’ve been helping him test it.”

“What does it do?” said Pete.

Now he felt on solid territory. He might not understand this particular machine, whatever it was, but at least it was a machine and not crystals, teas, or—even worse—a spreadsheet.

“I don’t understand it—you know I’m not technical—but it somehow projects images and sounds into people’s mind while they sleep. That’s the idea anyway. The crystals focus some kind of vibrational energy. Look, I’ll show you.”

She walked through the living room and opened the venetian blind.

“See that house over there?” she said, pointing into the far distance.

“No.” he said.

“It’s next to that red brick building, on the right. Little grey place.”

“Oh, yes.”

“He lives there, so his machine beams images and sounds over to my place at night. Hasn’t really worked, yet, though. Sometimes I think I’m receiving stuff but then it turns out he was sending something totally different.”

Pete’s mind was working overtime.

“He lives … there. You live … here. I … live there.”

He tried to trace a line with his hand, as if imagining a tilted plane. Then his eyes widened.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” said Mia, suddenly alarmed.

“I think I would like to talk to your friend.” he said.

Soon Pete was on his way to the house of Dr. Peter Morris, phoning his work as he walked to tell them he was going to be late that day. When he knocked on Morris’s door, a short and rather kindly-looking man answered. Morris was closer to 70 than 60, and looked closer to 80.

“Hello.” he said, with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Dr. Morris?” said Pete.

“Yes.”

“You do experiments involving attempting to implant dreams in people’s minds while they sleep.”

“Why, yes, I do.”

“I need to talk to you. May I come in?”

Morris looked back nervously over his shoulder into his house, as if he were in the middle of cooking something and didn’t want it to burn.

“I’m afraid the moment isn’t especially convenient. Could you come back another time?”

“If you make me come back, I’m bringing the police with me.”

“Whatever do you mean by that? I haven’t done anything wrong!”

Morris seemed outraged by the very suggestion.

“Are we going to talk or aren’t we?”

He hesitated for a few moments, then his shoulders sagged and he said, “Very well, come in. Just give me a few moment. I’m in the middle of an experiment.”

He continued petulantly complaining as he led Pete into a room at the back of the house.

“I shall have to switch the whole thing off. Three hours’ work completely wasted. I do hope your business is as urgent as you seem to think it is.”

Soon they were sitting in a pleasant, if somewhat businesslike living room. A photograph of Morris’s prematurely-deceased wife stood on the mantelpiece.

Morris himself wore a tweed jacket that looked like it had passed its best several decades ago, and thick cheap spectacles.

When Pete expressed his fears that Morris’s machine was giving him nightmares, Morris reacted with indignation.

“It’s absolutely out of the question.” he said. “You’re describing some kind of distressing sequence of horrific visions. I’ve consistently attempted to implant one very particular vision into Mia’s dreams, and there’s nothing sinister about it. Unfortunately she’s been unable to receive it, even after a year of trying. It’s quite frustrating. Still, I’m not paying her anything, so it’s good of her to help me out. I daresay the fault lies with the machine and not with her.”

“What exactly is this vision you’ve been trying to implant?”

“Would you like to see it?”

“Very much.” said Pete.

Morris led him through to a front room, the most notable feature of which was an enormous machine with a needle-like rod pointing directly at the building where Pete lived. In fact it was pointing directly, Pete guessed, at his bed.

“How does this thing work?” said Pete.

“Well, it’s complicated.” said Morris. “Essentially it uses a combination of electric and magnetic fields which create vortices in the air that produce a partial separation of the heavier argon from other gaseous components, setting up an ion gradient. The vortex travels at approximately —”

“All right.” said Pete, cutting him off. “But how does this affect dreams?”

“That’s all done through electro-acoustic methods.” said Morris. “You see, when the vortex hits the wall of your building, the ionic charge immediately collapses, creating —”

Pete held up his hand.

“Never mind.” he said. “I don’t understand any of this. Just show me what you’ve been trying to transmit.”

“Certainly.” said Morris, and he brought up a video on a computer at the side of the room.

“I filmed it at a conference I attended.” he said.

Pete watched as the camera’s point of view made its way through a door into a room, which then gradually began to fill with people.

“Can I skip forwards?” Pete asked.

“Be my guest.” said Morris, gesturing at the computer.

After skipping around in the video player for a while, Pete found the bit he was looking for.

The room was crowded, and the camera seemed to pick on one particular face which was approaching from the far side of the room.

Dr. Peter Morris, who was apparently holding the camera, muttered, “Oh, no!”

The face belong to an enormously large man, with an extremely extroverted manner. As he neared the camera, he said, “Hello Peter!”

Pete jumped back, shaking his head.

“What is it?” said Morris.

“Let me think for a second.” said Pete, and he stood by the window and gazed out, looking at the block of flats where he lived, in the distance.

“You see, the video’s quite harmless.” said Morris. “I’d hardly describe it as a nightmare.”

Pete went back to the computer.

“Can we slow this down?”

“There’s an icon in the bottom left of the window.” said Morris.

Pete reduced the speed of the video to a quarter of its original, then turned down the brightness on the computer screen to a minimum. Still not satisfied, he fiddled with the video player settings and reduced the contrast and saturation. Finally he stood back to watch the results.

“That’s it.” he said. “That’s my nightmare.”

On the screen only lumbering indistinct shapes were now visible, and the lively chatter had transmogrified into the low, rumbling growls of demonic entities.

“That’s what you’ve been dreaming?” said Morris. “You mean my device works?”

“Your signals,” said Pete, with barely-suppressed and growing anger, “have been going straight through Mia’s empty head and straight into mine.”

“Good heavens.” said Morris.

Pete exploded at him.

“You’ve nearly ruined my life!” he shouted. “You and your infernal machine! I thought I was going insane!”

“I’m so sorry.” said Morris, shaken. “I really had no idea. I don’t understand at all how the signal could have got slowed down. I wonder if the brain, during sleep, operates on a kind of clock frequency that —”

Pete lunged at him, grabbing him by the lapels of his tweed jacket.

“I could bloody well murder you.” he said, his voice cracking with a sudden gush of long pent-up emotion.

“Please!” said Morris. “I meant nothing bad, really I didn’t!”

“We’re going to take this demonic contraption apart right here and now, then I’m coming back with the cops, and you’re going to answer for your actions.”

Morris began to actually cry.

“This is my life’s work!” he said. “It’s all I’ve got left since my wife passed away. Please, I’ll find some way to make it up to you, I swear I will!”

Pete let go of him, pushing him as he did so, causing Morris to stagger backwards against the computer. He was about to commence wrenching parts off the machine when he froze, a thought occurring to him. He turned round to face the distraught scientist.

“What angle is this set at to the horizontal?” he said.

“Point four eight degrees.” said Morris. “Why?”

“Have you got a pen and paper?”

“Certainly.” said Morris, and he hurriedly produced both, hoping his eager compliance would somehow placate the angry suited man who had invaded his peaceful home.

After some scribbling, Pete said, “Work this out.” and handed the paper back to Morris, with a trigonometry equation circled on it.

Morris looked at him, pale and dumbfounded, then immediately entered the figures into the computer.

“Point one four three degrees.” he said.

“There is something you can do for me.” said Pete. “I want this machine’s inclination increased by 0.143 degrees or as near as you can manage. After that you’re to carry on running it every night, just as before, until I tell you to stop. And we need to edit that recording of yours. Instead of that guy saying ‘Hello Peter’, I want a voice that says ‘Llama’.”

“L-llama?” stuttered Morris.

“That’s right.” said Pete.

“And if I do this for you?”

“Then we’ll call it quits.” said Pete. “In fact, I might even buy you a drink.”

Llama was surprised when he spotted the open door. The opportunity was too good to resist. Business had been slow recently due to another police crackdown, and the house looked as though it almost certainly contained small valuable items.

Inside, the house was dimly-lit, with surprisingly little light making its way through the drawn curtains, even though the sun still hadn’t completely set. He considered switching on the lights, but decided against it for fear of attracting attention.

There didn’t seem to be very much of interest lying around, and he began to think that perhaps the occupants had moved out, carelessly leaving the door open.

Then, somewhere in the back of the building, he encountered a curiously ornate wooden door, possibly made of oak or beech.

He wondered if perhaps the door led to some kind of safe room, where valuables were kept. He tried the handle, not expecting it to open, but it did open.

Beyond the door he could see nothing. That was fine by him. He would feel around and see what his light-fingered hands alighted upon.

He stepped inside and walked tentatively forwards, his fingertips outstretched, expecting to encounter shelves, or perhaps the door of a safe. The thick door closed itself behind him.

He wheeled around, now unable to see anything at all, and a dreadful paranoid fear began to grow upon him. Was this some kind of trap, perhaps sprung by his enemies?

His heart began to beat wildly, and his mouth turned dry.

Then he heard it: a confused demonic mumbling and muttering. There were things here in the darkness with him: entities of some kind.

He had to find a way out.

He left the door, which he was unable to open from the inside, and staggered wildly into the darkness, looking for something solid to help him get his bearing. There was nothing; only the horrible evil muttering, which was getting louder and louder.

Just when he thought his heart would give out from sheer panic, he realised something was shuffling towards him. Something grotesque, abnormal. Straining his eyes, he thought he could see the faint outline of some massive shaggy creature.

Another sound struck further terror into his heart, and he realised a deep distorted voice was pronouncing the words “Oh, no” as if mocking him.

Then the horrible thing in front of him began to speak.

“Llllaaaaammmmaaaaa …..”

“What was that?” said Karen.

Her words caused Pete to awaken.

“What was what?” said Pete.

“I heard a horrible scream.”

“That bloke above us?” said Pete.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Probably just a bad trip.” said Pete. “Go back to sleep.”

A month later, a priest was seen entering Llama’s flat. Whatever the purpose of his visit, he didn’t stay long.

A month after that, Pete found police milling about on the stairs, going up and down from Llama’s door.

He asked a young officer, who seemed friendly enough, what was going on.

“Bloke ran into the police station and confessed to a bunch of stuff.” he said. “Can’t say more than that, really. Do you know him?”

“Vaguely.” said Pete. “So where is he now? In prison?”

“Psychiatric hospital, probably.” said the policeman. “He was totally unhinged. Never seen anything like it. No way to know what’s true and what isn’t. One thing’s for sure though, it’s going to take us a while to sort through the all the stuff that’s been going on in his flat.”

Pete went back into his own flat and began putting on a jacket.

“Going somewhere, love?” said Karen.

“Yeah. Won’t be long.” said Pete. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours tops. Friend of mine did me a bit of a favour. I owe him a drink.”

“I’ll come with you.” said Karen. “I fancy a drink.”

Pete hesitated.

“Darling,” he said, “I’ve got a bit of a story to tell you.”

She looked at him curiously.

It was at least six weeks since Llama had kept them awake with loud music in the middle of the night, and Pete seemed relaxed and well-rested for the first time in a couple of years. He looked ten years younger.

“All right.” she said.

Clive led the way, jumping into and out of ditches like a gazelle.

Mount Eramju towered over them as they approached it, its upper slopes wreathed in a fine mist that somehow resisted the African sun.

Soon they were standing at the edge of the village. This time no crowd of curious children came running up to them. Instead, the villagers watched them warily from a distance.

“Remarkable.” said Clive. “Look how they live. Steel pots, nylon clothes, yet apart from that you’d almost think this was something from the Stone Age. These people value their isolation highly.”

“Makes no sense.” said Richard, wafting away the mosquitos with his hand.

“Can’t say I blame them.” said Al, and then, changing topic, he added, “You sure that thing’s only four thousand metres? Looks higher.”

“Satellites don’t lie, Al.” said Clive.

Clive took a water bottle from his side, unscrewed the cap and took a long swig. Their faces were all covered in dust, drips of sweat leaving trails of relatively clean skin. It was five days since any of them had been able to wash properly.

A solitary man walked slowly towards them, emerging from between the low grass-roofed huts.

Clive pulled himself up to his full height and fixed the man with a steely smile.

“Do you think he’s dangerous?” said Richard.

“No.” said Clive.

When the man was perhaps thirty yards away, he shouted, “Speak English?”

“We are English.” shouted Clive in reply.

The man walked silently up to them.

“We’ve brought you some cooking pots and clothes.” said Richard, hoisting the bag off his back and holding it up.

“Why are you here?” said the man.

“What’s your name?” said Clive.

“My name is Olumwe.” said the man.

“Olumwe, we’re here to climb your mountain. We’d like to survey the plant and animal life there.”

“No.” said Olumwe.

“No?” said Clive.

“The mountain is sacred to my people. Only the chosen ones may climb it.”

“The chosen ones?” said Clive. “Who chooses them?”

“The mountain chooses who should go there. They come from all around. They come alone.”

“How do you know the mountain hasn’t chosen us?”

“You are not alone.”

“Perhaps we were all chosen, individually, and we’ve all come together.”

“You are not chosen.” said Olumwe.

“There are two ways we can do this.” said Clive. “You can take our gifts. There’s cooking ware in there, shorts, t-shirts, chocolate and some other things. And we can make our way peacefully up the mountain. Or—”

Clive patted the hunting rifle slung against his chest.

Olumwe stared at him, and the three men instinctively tensed. Then Olumwe’s face broke into a wide, cold smile, revealing two rows of perfectly white teeth except for a single missing tooth, and he took the bag. The smile disappeared as fast as it had appeared.

“I will not stop you.” he said. “But you are not chosen.”

With that, he turned and walked back towards the huts.

“Listen, Clive.” said Al. “I didn’t sign up for this. You said they might be reluctant to let us go up there. You didn’t say anything about forcing our way into sacred territory.”

“Sacred territory!” scoffed Clive. “What a load of nonsense.”

“Now, hang on a minute.” said Richard. “Al has a point. We can’t just go wading in where we’re not wanted.”

“He took our gifts.” said Clive. “It’s a fair exchange. We’ve come a long way for this. Are you with me or aren’t you?”

Al and Richard glanced uneasily at each other.

“I don’t think we are with you.” said Richard. “There’s plenty to discover round here without trespassing on their mountain.”

“Al?” said Clive.

“This is a bit much, really.” said Al. “I’m not going up there. Sorry, Clive.”

Clive looked from one to the other and said, “Fine! If you’re going to be swayed by their silly superstitions I’ll go by myself. I’ll be back by nightfall.”

He turned and followed Olumwe into the village.

“He never used to be like this.” said Richard, gazing after him.

Several dozen alarmed faces watched Clive from a safe distance as he walked through the village. No-one spoke to him. No-one tried to stop him. The extreme poverty of the village was obvious; people were barely dressed, and in rags. Many were visibly suffering from one terrible disease or another.

The sun was ferocious and unforgiving. Without his wide-brimmed hat, even Clive would have had to seek shade, yet these people seemed to prefer the full sun to the shadows of the trees on the lower slopes of the mountain.

Soon he was past the village and was trudging steadily upwards on a track that was surprisingly well-defined: the vegetation worn away, most likely by countless human feet.

He had ascended perhaps a thousand metres when he noticed a man following along behind him on the trail in the distance. By steadying his binoculars on some rocks, he was able to see the man quite well. It wasn’t Olumwe; it was someone else. Someone stranger. The man walked as though in a trance, his gaze seemingly fixed on the summit and never deviating. He wore only tattered old shorts and carried not so much as a spear. He was making a good pace; faster even than Clive himself. Clive put the binoculars down, shaking his head in wonder at the strangeness of these people.

As he ascended higher, the trail began to weave from side to side, in order to avoid directly climbing the steep mountainside. Periodically he rested, drinking water and chewing pemmican. The altitude increasingly provided some minor relief from the oppressive heat, but not much. Through his binoculars, he enviously eyed the thin mist near the top. He also swung them downwards to observe the progress of the curious individual following along behind him on the trail. It occurred to him that the man had probably been sent to intercept him. But then, why wasn’t he armed?

He unslung his rifle and double checked that everything was in order. He considered firing off a warning shot, but in the end decided there was no need for it; these people knew a rifle when they saw one, and if the man wouldn’t leave him alone then he’d just have to end his days there on the mountain, with a Russian-made bullet in him.

On the upper reaches of the mountain, the path became extremely rocky and Clive was often forced to use his hands for balance. The trees that intermittently clothed the lower slopes gave way to low spiky bushes, and then those gradually gave way to nothing but grass and trailing shrubs, with patches of bare rock here and there.

Soon he reached the rocky escarpment near the summit. Casting a wary eye over it, he wondered whether to risk scrabbling up it or to get out the climbing equipment. It was covered in loose rocks and it didn’t look like cams would hold well anywhere. On the other hand, it was steep enough that, if he slipped, he might very well roll to the bottom of it.

He was pondering the matter when a noise behind him made him jump and he wheeled around, taking the rifle in his hands.

It was the man he had seen earlier. He had practically run up the side of the mountain, maintaining a brisk pace until he actually caught up with Clive.

“Stop where you are!” Clive shouted, levelling the rifle at him, but the man paid him no attention at all. His gaze remained fixed on the summit, and he walked past Clive and began to scramble up the escarpment.

Clive stood and watched as the man disappeared over the top. Then, seeing that the slope could be navigated with relative ease, he began to follow the man up it, freezing every so often as his feet dislodged loose stones, which went bouncing to the bottom, in many cases continuing all the way down the side of the mountain.

By the time he reached the summit he was shaking from nerves and exertion. He pulled himself onto the barren rocky outcrop that capped the mountain and stood upright to survey a horrifying sight.

The summit, an area perhaps a hundred square yards in size, was littered with corpses. They all lay on their backs and all were mostly in an advanced state of decomposition, seemingly rotted from their chests inward. The corpses had been heavily scavenged by vultures, and such two revolting birds were quarrelling over a comparatively fresh corpse on the opposite edge, pecking at its face and eyes.

Clive fired the rifle in the air and they flew off, hissing like kettles.

He spotted the man who had followed him up the mountain, lying somewhere in the middle, on his back. He put the rifle on his back and ran over to the man.

“Are you all right?” he said, unsure if the man could understand him.

The man made no reply. Clive noticed there was an odd network of marks on the man’s torso, almost like a spider’s web, sometimes forming rough hexagons and other polygons.

He shook the man’s shoulder.

“I said, are you all right?”

Finally the man’s eyes moved slowly to his face and the man looked directly at Clive for the first time.

In a near-whisper, he said, “I am chosen.”

Then his eyes returned to gazing at the sky, he sighed heavily, and then stopped breathing altogether.

Clive stumbled backwards, almost tripping on one of the many rotting corpses. He gazed uncomprehendingly at the grotesque scene before him. Many of the bodies seemed partially-covered with some blackish substance, as if someone had gone around pouring tar on them. He leaned close to one of them and with the muzzle of his rifle, poked at the black tar.

Then the hiss of a vulture startled him and he abruptly stood up and walked back to the escarpment.

“Enough of this.” he muttered to himself.

Scrambling down the unstable rocky slope, he almost lost control on the lower part, and landed painfully with his foot against a rock, mildly spraining his ankle.

He had intended to carry out a systematic survey of the plants to be found on the mountain on the way down, at least in so far as the very limited time available allowed, but now, with a slight limp and a thoroughly disconcerted mind, he descended as fast as his ankle would let him.

Four hours later he was back at the vehicles.

“You’re back early.” said Richard.

“Let’s get out of here.” he replied.

“Something wrong?” said Al.

“This place gives me the creeps, is all.” said Clive. “Let’s go.”

On paper, Clive was the ideal husband. He smart and funny. He was brave and adventurous. He seemed to have a strange ability to summon money whenever it was needed. For the first few years they had known each other, Emma had thought him the perfect boyfriend. Then, slowly, a side of him had emerged of which she had scarcely suspected the existence. A ruthless cold determination had gradually replaced the warm, funny side of Clive.

In the two years since their marriage, and with no children on the way—he was, after all, away a great deal of the time, which didn’t help—she increasingly found herself wondering if she’d made the right choice.

For a brief time after his return from the African expedition, he seemed almost like his old self again, and she began to think that perhaps he’d just fallen into a bad mood for the past two years, and would now return to his former good humour. Then, a new obsession began to slowly make itself felt.

He returned one day from a trip to the dentist carrying a magazine. It was a magazine aimed primarily at women and was quite unlike his usual reading material.

“Look at this.” he said, opening the magazine and laying it on the the kitchen table in front of her as she drank a coffee.

“No.” she said. “No, Clive, you’re not doing that.”

“But look at it.” he said.

“It’s too dangerous.” she said. “What’s even the point? It’s one of the most explored mountains in the world.”

He stared at the picture, his head bobbing very slightly, as if some unusual emotion had seized hold of him.

“How can I call myself an explorer if I’ve never climbed Everest?” he said.

“Is it really about calling yourself an explorer?” said Emma. “I thought it was more about doing the actual exploring.”

“You know, you can go up there for £20,000.”

“We haven’t got £20,000.”

“Maybe even £5,000 if I do a no-frills package.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you? This is a joke.”

But he continued to stare at the picture, breathing heavily.

She looked at him uncertainly, nervously. She had never seen him quite like this before.

Over the following year, the Everest obsession only grew.

“If you’re going up there I’m taking out life insurance on you.” she told him.

“Do it.” he said. “I’ll pay for it. There’s specialist insurance that’ll cover it.”

It was a curious kind of caring, where he insisted on risking his life but at least didn’t want to saddle her with debt.

Soon the house was filled with pictures of mountains, although it was Everest that seemed to have by far the greatest magnetism for Clive. When they took a two-week holiday in summer, he insisted on going to a ski resort in the Alps, well out of season, where he practised ascending the local hills and even spend four days actually mountaineering, leaving Emma at the hotel.

In the autumn, he announced that he would attempt Everest the following April.

She positively flew off the handle.

“You’ve no experience with mountains anywhere near that high!” she protested.

“Doesn’t matter.” he said. “The guides can take anyone up there these days. You only need to be physically fit. I’ve more mountain experience than half of them.”

“Why, Clive?” she wailed at him. “What’s to be gained from it? Are you trying to prove to people you can do it?”

She had managed to persuade him to go for a walk with her by the river, an activity which he used to enjoy, but which now he treated as a dull chore.

He made no reply.

She got in front of him and took hold of his arms, almost shaking him, tears in her eyes.

“Give me a reason I can understand!” she said. “I’ll support you if you can just explain it to me.”

Then she outrightly broke down in tears.

“I want you to be happy.” she sobbed. “I just don’t understand it. You’ve changed so much.”

Finally his eyes, which had taken on a curiously blank quality in the preceding months, seemed to connect with hers. He looked down at the ground, shamefaced, and then back at her again.

“I don’t know.” he said. “I don’t know why I have to do it. I just know that I have to. I have to go up there, Emma. I know you’re worried. It’ll be fine. The vast majority of people these days reach the summit and get down again perfectly safely. It’s a bit of a tourist trap, is the fact of the matter. I’m fit, I have a lot of experience at lower altitudes, and I have experience of exploring cold environments. Hell, I’ve been to the Antarctic four times. I’ll be OK. I just need to get it out my system.”

She looked into his eyes and saw his soul already beginning to retreat back into its obsession, and she said, “OK. I don’t get it but OK. Just don’t cut me out, Clive. It’s like you’re having an affair with this ruddy mountain.”

He giggled, quietly and mirthlessly.

Al, also, found himself becoming greatly puzzled by Clive’s behaviour, while Richard had since somewhat distanced himself altogether from Clive. They had all known each other for many years, and in all that time, Clive’s distinguishing feature had been an obsessive interest in exploration, but the obsession had never before seemed to displace human connection.

Al and Emma met secretly in a cafe when Clive was away in Scotland climbing a much lesser mountain than Everest, Emma feeling almost guilty, as though she was having some sort of fling with Al, which she wasn’t.

“It’s since the Africa expedition.” said Al glumly.

“Exactly.” said Emma. “You know what I’m talking about. It’s not just me.”

“It’s not just you. I know exactly what you’re talking about. This Everest thing, it’s totally out of character. He’s not his usual self.”

“He’s changed a lot in the past two or three years,” said Emma, “but before Africa, at least I could say he was still the man I married. Now, I don’t know anymore.”

Al’s fingers were intertwined, his elbows resting on the table in front of him. He jabbed at his lips with his thumbs.

“I wish I could say something useful.” he said. “Something to explain it.”

He let his hands fall onto the table and he looked directly at her.

“I just don’t know what’s got into him.” he said, shaking his head.

She took one of his hands and squeezed it slightly, forgetting herself.

“At least you can see what I see.” she said. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”

Then she drew her hand back, almost blushing.

“Sorry.” she said, although it was unclear what she was apologising for.

“If you need me, I’m here for you.” said Al.

In February, Clive flew to Kathmandu and from there he took a small propeller plane to Lukla. Lukla was a village in the Himalayas, full of squat modern-looking buildings. Clive had joined an expedition led by Australian climber Steve Patterson, who ran a company specialising in getting people safely up the mountain.

That year Patterson was taking six people up Everest, including Clive. They assembled in a room in a low blue-painted hotel in Lukla, together with American climber Hank Bennett and the team’s doctor, Sheila Carson, also Australian.

In the end, Clive, who was well-used to raising money for expeditions, had got together nearly £40,000 for a premium-rate guided tour up to the summit, partly in return for agreeing to help promote a certain brand of camera.

Carson took her place next to Patterson, at the front of the room, and explained various medical considerations to the group, including the symptoms of altitude sickness, the use of dexamethasone, and the effects of oxygen deprivation.

“As you know, Everest is 8,848 metres high.” she told the group. “Above 8,000 metres you are gradually dying.”

“The trick is to get up and down before you’ve finished dying.” chipped in Patterson chirpily.

“Even with supplemental oxygen, which we’ll be using all the way,” Carson continued, “the atmospheric pressure is so low that no matter how hard you breathe, you can’t get enough oxygen into your blood.”

Clive looked around at the other members of the group. There were two Americans, a German, a Swiss woman and a fellow Englishman, whose name was Alan Springfield. One of the Americans was an elite climber who had trained in Alaska, but the other had little experience and appeared somewhat overweight.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. As long as he got up there, whether the rest of them made it or not was of little concern to him.

For eight days they trekked from Lukla to Everest Base Camp, gradually acclimatising, ascending a further two-and-a-half thousand metres to the base camp at 5,364 metres.

Alan seemed particularly drawn to Clive, as a compatriot, but Clive found he had no appetite for conversation. Every attempt people made to converse with him only got on his nerves. All he could think about was the summit.

On the third day of the trek, the group got their first view of Everest. They stopped to enjoy the sight. Even though at that distance, Everest seemed a little underwhelming, its iconic shape was visible. Most of the group, exhausted as they already were, only gazed placidly at the distant mountain, while Patterson regaled them with more facts and figures.

Mike, the overweight American, seemed somewhat terrified, but the vision of the mountain produced by far its greatest effect in Clive. As he stared at the distant mountain, it seemed to fill his entire mind, until he could hardly tell himself apart from the mountain. Something titanic and ineffable subverted all of his thoughts until there were no thoughts left; only an inescapable monolithic reality: four-and-a-half trillion tons of rock, capped with ice and cloud.

“Clive? Clive.”

A voice seemed to be calling him from far away, almost from another world, another dimension of being. It was Alan, the stockbroker from England.

“I said, it’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

But even after Clive became aware that he was standing on a rocky mule trail and that Alan was asking him something, he still couldn’t bring himself to reply.

“Sorry to disturb you then.” said Alan, sarcastically, and he wandered off to talk to Mike.

From Base Camp the summit lay only three-and-a-half thousand metres vertically upwards. Had they started from sea level, most of them could have easily made the summit in a few hours and come all the way back down again in time for tea, but the cold, the treacherous terrain, and, above all, the lack of oxygen and low air pressure, made for an entirely different proposition.

Over nearly two months, they hiked up to higher and higher camps, reaching Camp 3, and then finally they climbed up to Camp 4, ready for the summit attempt in the evening.

By then, the Swiss woman had dropped out due to altitude sickness, coughing blood and suffering terrible headaches. Mike, surprisingly, was still in the running. All the climbers were complaining about the cold air freezing their lungs, the headaches, nausea and exhaustion. All, except Clive. Clive appeared not to care, and Patterson even had to repeatedly had to tell him to slow down, to keep pace with the group.

Finally the fateful hour came when the group were to push for the summit, and then an unexpected problem occurred. They were due to depart at 11pm, to reach the summit by morning. By 2pm the next day they would have to turn around in order to get back to Camp 4 before dark, whether they had made the summit or not. Not getting back by dark meant possibly spending the night in the death zone, where the air is not thick enough to support human life indefinitely, and a night in the death zone is typically fatal.

During the course of the day, a storm had unexpectedly veered towards the mountain, and by 11pm Camp 4 was immersed in a violent snowstorm, with high freezing winds and thick fog.

Even so, Patterson had to almost physically restrain Clive from attempting to summit.

Clive seemed barely responsive to verbal instructions, but this isn’t entirely unusual at such an altitude, so Patterson assumed that Clive was simply a little confused due to the low oxygen and air pressure.

Dr. Carson hadn’t joined them on the actual climb, but Patterson contacted her via satellite phone and together they carried out a cursory medical examination of Clive. Aside from his slightly odd mental state, which was really not altogether out of the ordinary under the circumstances and wasn’t necessarily a showstopper for him, there was only one other thing observably unusual about him. When Patterson, following Carson’s instructions, made to check Clive’s heartbeat with a stethoscope, he found an odd rash on Clive’s chest, silvery-blue vein-like lines forming strange polygonal patterns.

By midnight the storm has lessened but Patterson and his team considered the weather still too unsettled to depart. Patterson reluctantly began to consider calling off the summit attempt. In fact, he was to return to Camp 2, and then make a second attempt on the summit, which would be successful for all but two of the remaining five.

At 12.20am, the altitude-befuddled team realised that Clive was missing. They began to search for him as best they could under the circumstances, and it was during this search that Mike also disappeared.

Mike had a bad case of summit fever—the insatiable desire to make the summit, even when common sense and experience advise against it—and he had decided that if Clive was going for it solo, he would too.

Clive trudged steadily up the precarious slope, the only thought in his head being that he wanted to reach the top. As he neared the summit he encountered at least two other people who were, by then, heading in the opposite direction, down the mountain, having inadvisably braved the storm, and they tried to warn him that he was too late, and should turn around, but he ignored them completely.

A little later on the same people encountered Mike and issued the same advice to him.

“If Clive’s going, I’m going.” he said, slurring his words, without even explaining who Clive was.

By then at least the storm had died down, and the day, although now useless to mountaineers attempting the summit, had turned bright and clear.

In the end, only two solitary figures remained, trudging up the mountain.

Clive, by far in the lead, progressed with astonishing speed, although his overall progress was somewhat slowed by a tendency to wander dangerously off in the wrong direction, away from the fixed ropes and relatively well-defined route that led to the summit.

Even so, around 4 am he reached the Hillary Step, which was covered in snow, Sherpas having been unable to clear as usual it due to the storm, and somehow successfully traversed it.

From there he staggered resolutely onwards, almost impervious to the cold.

Around noon, he finally stumbled onto the top of the world. He staggered to the middle of the snow dome that formed the summit, hardly twelve metres wide, and lay down on his back, staring up at the blue sky, a wide smile on his face. Then he closed his eyes and something began to stir underneath his shirt.

When Mike reached the summit, dazed from lack of oxygen, confused, apathetic, and cold as death, he encountered a terrifying sight, the sheer horror of which penetrated through the apathy of his befuddled mind like a dagger through his heart.

A finger-like fungus was growing from Clive’s prostrate body, the tip of it swelling visibly moment by moment, ready to burst and release its spores.

In a befuddled fugue inspired by both terror and altitude sickness, he shuffled over to Clive’s body and, perhaps by some prehistoric instinct, began to push him towards the Kangshung Face to the east. He had almost completed the task of ridding the world of the fungal obscenity when the cornice collapsed beneath him, and together they plummeted into the unclimbed abyss below.

After Clive’s death, Emma leaned heavily on Al. Together, they devoted themselves to attempting to understand exactly what had happened to Clive, and even set to work on a biography. They decided not to return to Mount Eramju, feeling that whatever was there, was best left alone. At the same time, they were intrigued by local accounts of the “chosen ones” and hopeful that one day, perhaps Clive’s body could be recovered, and that post-mortem analysis could somehow shed light on the entire mystery.

That Clive’s behaviour was connected to whatever was going on at Mount Eramju, they felt certain, although they could not prove it.

Two years after Clive’s disappearance, they married. Clive’s body has never been found.

They had corresponded extensively on the subject of the hypothesised Omega device; the computer smart enough to improve its own design, and while Dirk considered Gabor’s ideas distinctly inferior to his own, Gabor had certainly made some useful suggestions, and it would be interesting to meet him.

Accordingly, he packed a considerable quantity of clothes and equipment into two suitcases and summoned a taxi. He nervously watched the taxi approach on his phone. When it was almost at the door of the building where he rented a room, he took the suitcases down the stairs and outside.

They were heavy, but he intended to stay for a full week and Gabor had promised to exchange certain pieces of equipment that Dirk needed for other pieces that he didn’t need: a very appealing offer.

When the taxi arrive, a blue plastic angular vehicle, Dirk pressed the button on the app to open the luggage compartment and he hoisted a suitcase into it.

Then he realised he’d forgotten his ID card. He’d been so focused on the equipment that it had slipped his mind. He ran back into the house to get it.

When he re-emerged from the front door, the luggage compartment lid flipped shut in front of him.

“No, no, no!” he shouted, but in vain.

The vehicle sped away.

He was left standing on the pavement, watching helplessly as the taxi eloped with his suitcase; the one containing most of the equipment.

Thinking quickly, he realised that, of course, the vehicle would run itself in porter mode, and would decant his suitcase at the airport, into a locker. It wasn’t the end of the world.

He dialled up another taxi, and this time after loading his suitcase into the luggage compartment, he was able to successfully get into it, and soon he was standing outside the departures terminal, holding the handle of a suitcase that contained his clothes, some books, and a few odds and ends of technical apparatus.

He made his way straight to the lost luggage desk. The luggage desk was personed by a woman who he disliked intensely almost immediately. She was beautiful and serious. She made him feel entirely inferior.

“Hello.” he said, smiling ingratiatingly in a way that, although Dirk didn’t realise it, actually made him appear very irritable. He was, after all, very irritable. “I hired a smart taxi to get here but the luggage compartment shut and it took my suitcase away before I could get in. Do you know where it will have taken it?”

“That’s a matter for the taxi company, sir.” said the woman.

“Yes, I know, but the taxi would have transferred my suitcase to a locker, wouldn’t it?”

“Did you set a PIN code on the app?”

“Yes.”

The woman sighed and looked at a screen.

“I’m sorry sir, but you need to call the taxi company. We can’t reveal locker numbers to unauthorised persons.”

“Could you at least confirm whether it was delivered? The taxi ID was 89394.”

“I can’t give you that information, sir. You need to call the taxi company.”

“OK. I’ll call them. Thanks.”

He walked away, inwardly congratulating himself on his politeness in the face of considerable provocation.

Then he took out his phone and tried to find a way to contact the taxi company. Eventually, after asking two different AIs, he found some contact details and he placed a call.

The line immediately began to play muzak, and a voice informed him that he was in a queue and should hold.

He began to swear and curse, quietly at first and then louder, attracting annoyed stares, progressing to issuing murky threats to the company and its management.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm.

“Would you mind keeping it down please, sir?” said a security guard.

“S-sorry, sorry!” said Dirk, and he rang the call off.

“You’re welcome to make calls here, sir.” said the guard. “Just if you could keep the swearing down a bit.”

“Of course.” said Dirk.

He went back to the help desk.

“Hello, it’s me again.” he said, as jocularly as he could manage.

“Sorry, I don’t know you.” said the woman.

“I was just here a second ago, about my suitcase.”

“Sorry sir, I don’t remember that.” she said. “Would you like to open a help desk ticket?”

It suddenly struck him that she was almost certainly automated. Probably one of the older systems. He peered at her face. Yes, the makeup was too perfect. Alas, the same couldn’t be said for her programming.

“The thing is, I hired a taxi and it took my suitcase here before I could get in. I’ve got a PIN. I just need to know the locker number.”

“You would need to take that up with your taxi company, sir.”

“I know, but I’ve just phoned them and their lines are busy.”

“Sorry sir, we can’t help you.”

Dirk snapped abruptly, having reached the limit of his patience.

“You piece of garbage!”

“We have a zero-tolerance policy on staff abuse, sir.” said the help desk assistant, sternly, with a surprised face.

“Automated trash!” he said, almost shouting, and he stormed off, passers-by staring at him in alarm.

At the locker bank he began trying his PIN in all of the lockers, one by one.

One after the other, they bleeped negative, denying him access. People began to cast strange looks in his direction.

He was running late, but he could still catch the flight, he thought. Mentally he calculated the odds. Probably there were around a hundred and fifty lockers. There was a fifty percent chance he’d have to try 75 of them. If each one took 20 seconds …

“Can I help you, sir?”

He turned to see another security officer standing watching him. The man didn’t seem happy. If he was a man. He could also very well be automated, although Dirk wasn’t sure whether the bots had actually developed so far that they could work as security guards.

“My taxi took my luggage here without me and I don’t know what locker it’s in.” said Dirk.

“Why are you trying that locker then, sir, if you don’t know which one your luggage is in?”

“Because this might be the one!” said Dirk, frustrated, only half-turning to look at the officer.

“You can’t try all the lockers, sir.” said the officer.

“Why not? Your help desk bot won’t tell me which one’s got my stuff so I’m left without much alternative.”

“That’s him.” said another voice.

At first Dirk ignored it, then he realised it belonged to the help desk assistant. The assistant had legs. Probably then, she wasn’t automated after all.

“Excuse me, sir!” said another security officer, loudly and forcefully.

Dirk stopped trying the lockers and turned to look. It was the same officer who’d told him not to swear on his phone. He was glad about that. At least this officer seemed relatively harmless.

“What?” said Dirk.

“You were abusive towards this lady.”

“Sorry.” said Dirk. “I thought she was automated. I just need to find my locker.”

He turned back to the lockers and began trying his PIN code again.

“Stop that, please, sir.” said the first security officer.

“I’m placing you under arrest.” said the second security officer.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” said Dirk.

The first security officer began to try to drag him away from the lockers.

At that moment, the locker he’d last tried unlocked.

“I’ve found it!” Dirk exclaimed, struggling forwards while the officer tried to drag him backwards.

“You’re under arrest.” said the second officer, attempting to pull Dirk’s arms behind his back.

“This is my locker!” said Dirk. “I’ve found it!”

“Stop resisting.” said the first officer.

“I’m not resisting! I’ve found my locker! This is what I was looking for in the first place.”

They let go of him and he began to take his suitcase out of the locker.

“Stop or I will tase you.” said the second officer.

“It’s OK, just give me a minute.” said Dirk. “I’ll get my —”

He stopped talking as the taser dart hit him, then he fell to the ground, as stiff as a plank.

They let him go the next day, after he’d spent the whole rest of the day being questioned at the airport, and the night locked in a cell.

He went home in another taxi, with his two suitcases, hair disheveled, barely having slept. Of course he couldn’t meet Gabor. Legal ramifications from his trip to the airport were, in fact, to drag on for two more months before proceedings against him would eventually be dropped.

He spoke to Gabor via the internet, in the evening of the day after his release, having spent the day sleeping fitfully, periodically waking up with a knot in his stomach.

“And then they fired a damn taser at me!” he said to Gabor, after recounting his experiences.

“Listen, Dirk.” said Gabor calmly. “I went to say something to you.”

“What’s that?” said Dirk.

“We have to remember that we are on the edge of an incredible discovery. The Omega device will put incredible power in our hands. It will make us the rulers of the world, basically.”

“I’ll have those guards put in a prison camp.” said Dirk. “And that woman. And the people at the taxi company. And anyone involved with the whole ridiculous system.”

Gabor smiled patiently.

“No.” he said. “That’s exactly my point, Dirk. We cannot be petty. We have to be above all that. We must be pure, in our hearts.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” said Dirk. “You weren’t damn well tasered for trying to get your luggage!”

“You can’t take revenge.”

“It’s not revenge. It’s justice.”

Gabor decided to try another tack.

“These people at the airport, what will they be to you, when you have the Omega device? Nothing. They’re not important. They’re like ants. Do you crush ants for the fun of it?”

“Yes.” said Dirk. “Sometimes.”

Gabor shook his head.

“With this kind of power, we must be responsible. We must be fair.”

“Who’s this we anyway?” said Dirk. “I’m a lot closer to doing it than you are.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.” said Gabor.

“You were messing about with water when we first got in touch. I told you about propylene carbonate.”

“That’s true, Dirk, and it was a great suggestion, but now that I know about it, I’m pretty close to succeeding, I think.”

They went on like this for nearly an hour, bickering about who was closer to building the device. Gabor tried to emphasise that theirs was a joint project and that, therefore, both would ultimately share power as co-rulers of the world, both exercising a moderating influence on the other out of necessity. Dirk, on the other hand, was inclined to view their project more as a competition; a competition which he believed he would win.

Their call finished on strained terms, both making propitiatory noises, but both highly unsatisfied with the other.

By the day after, Dirk’s attitude had hardened. He found himself almost hating Gabor.

He set to work that day with renewed vigour. He dissolved a fresh batch of copper chloride in some propylene carbonate and inserted the elaborate grid of platinum electrodes. He switched on the microcontroller and began to run the training currents through the solution, this time doubling the frequency to 10 MHz.

Why he doubled the frequency, he wasn’t sure himself. It was a shot in the dark, and shots in the dark, in his experience, never worked. But there was something lurking in the back of his mind; some half-memory of a dream, and somehow he felt the idea to be a good one.

Soon a dense network of pure copper fibres had formed in the solution, and the network was successfully passing a suite of automated tests, indicating that it was able to effectively memorise input presented to it, was able to infer patterns in data, and had an effective short-term memory of around a hundred microseconds, enabling complex input to be presented sequentially.

In the evening Dirk presented it with a test that none of his networks had ever previously passed: he presented it with training data intended for teaching English and basic reasoning skills to digital language models.

Then he went to sleep, excited but exhausted.

The following morning he found the complex network of copper strands had successfully passed the language test suite. Excitedly, he switched on the microphone and spoke to the device.

“Computer. This is your creator, Dirk. Can you hear me?”

“Hi Dirk.” said the device. “How are you today?”

“What is the capital of France?”

“The capital of France as of 10th January 2035 is Paris. Would you like me to tell you more about Paris or France?”

After an hour he switched off the microphone, beaming from ear to ear.

It worked. It had to be made bigger.

On a credit card, he purchased a large fish tank. He also bought more chemicals and electronic parts, including three new microcontrollers. For two weeks he worked almost without sleep on the machine. He felt as though he’d taken some powerful stimulant; the world as a whole seemed strangely distant from him, as if separated by sheets of translucent glass, but his thoughts proceeded with cast-iron logic and determination towards his goal.

He also spent several thousand pounds on new datasets, including data specialised towards scientific work, especially physics and chemistry. The chirpy friendliness of the standard training sets had to be eliminated; he wanted only efficiency, not servility.

After two weeks were over, he was already frighteningly close. Then his boss, David, phoned.

“Hello?” said Dirk.

“Dirk?” said David. “You were supposed to be in today. Are you all right?”

“I forgot to say, I’m not coming in anymore.”

“You’re not coming in? Are you ill?”

“No. I simply have no use for your pointless labour.”

There was a pause, as David wondered whether Dirk had lost his mind, and what responsibility he bore if so. Should he phone a doctor?

“You’re resigning?” said David finally.

“Bingo.” said Dirk. “Effective immediately.”

“We can’t pay you if you don’t at least work your notice period. It’s one month’s notice, Dirk.”

“Your terms are acceptable.” said Dirk, and he ended the call. “Where was I?” he said to himself. “Yes, the voltage needs to be just a little higher.”

Soon he was ready to begin documenting the machine’s construction and feeding the information into its inputs. For good measure he added several cameras and field sensors.

After a further two weeks, it was ready.

“Computer.” he said to it. “Suggest improvements to your own construction. In particular, focus on intelligence and stability. Bear in mind cost of materials and possible threats to my health and safety.”

The machine began to rattle off a list of possible improvements, and its justifications for them. Dirk carefully wrote them down, muttering things like “Of course!” and “Why didn’t I think of that?”

A month later he had constructed a new machine.

Since all the local rubbish bins had tiny apertures and none were appropriate for the material of which he needed to dispose, he took the remnants of the old machine, after stripping off any useful parts, and threw them over a bridge into a river, giggling to himself.

The new machine proved extremely powerful, but still he asked it how he could improve it.

The machine’s suggestions were surprising. Among other things, it invented entirely new ways of manipulating metal objects, using magnetic and electric fields. Dirk set to work implementing its suggestions.

It was while implementing Omega 3.0 that he realised he was going to run clean out of money. His credit card was almost maxed out, as was his overdraft with the bank.

He asked Omega 2.0 how he could make some money, and the machine suggested connecting it to the internet and leaving the matter up to itself. He complied, and Omega 2.0 had soon, via methods he barely understood but which appeared entirely legitimate, signed him up for a new bank account with a more accommodating bank than his usual bank and filled the account with money.

When he logged into the account to check the balance, at first he had trouble believing what he was seeing, even though he had already spoken with Omega 2.0 about it at some length.

“Surely it can’t be.” said Dirk, gazing at the account information. “Is that a decimal point? No, it’s a comma.”

An enormous smile appeared on his face. He was now a multi-millionaire.

The rest of the year was a whirlwind of activity for Dirk. His chief worry changed from concern that the machine wouldn’t work, to concern that it would work too well, and that he would struggle to contain its power.

He considered relocating to Spain or perhaps South America, but in the end purchased a large house overlooking some low rocky cliffs in Wales. In the evening, the setting sun filled the seaward side of the house with light, but Dirk barely even noticed it. He was too busy with Omega 3.0.

He had workmen construct a swimming pool in his basement, and he soon filled it with chemicals brought in by tanker from chemical supply companies, all organised by Omega 2.0. Since the household electricity supply was inadequate, he had two generators set up in soundproofed bunkers, kept supplied by diesel from a large tank. The exhaust fumes he arranged to pass through an elaborate filter, to avoid attracting attention.

When it was all ready, he pulled the master lever and watched as thin metallic threads of a complex alloy slowly began to shoot through the blue liquid in the underground swimming pool. He began to laugh, quietly at first, then hysterically, doubling over and eventually falling on his back by the side of the pool. When he stopped laughing, the first thought to enter his head had to do with the CEO of Autotaxi Driverless Taxis Ltd: Alex Pignon.

He thought of Pignon’s smug face—he considered it smug—and imagined his head exploding.

Yes, that would be a fitting end for him.

Then he rose to a sitting position, almost inadvertently dipping his feet into the chemical contents of the swimming pool, and gazed appreciatively at the bluish liquid.

“Together, we will rule the world.” he said.

Meanwhile, Gabor Szilvás was experiencing some difficulties. Convinced that Dirk posed a threat to the world, he had persuaded his aunt to let him use her modest country house—really little more than a shack, without even a washing machine—for his experiments, and he had quit his job to work full-time on the project, living off his meagre savings and a little extra money made by tutoring children and students in mathematics online.

His experimental results always seemed promising, but the promise rarely materialised. Day after day, night after night, he tried every possible technique, trick and combination of parameters, but his machines never progressed beyond inferring simple patterns presented by a vast array of electrodes.

He needed to be able to present data sequentially to the network of fine copper wires, and have it remember the beginning of the data by the time the end of it was reached, and this step he could barely get to work at all.

From a certain point of view, the lack of results was reassuring. From another point of view, it was of course disheartening.

In a dingy cellar bar he discussed the matter with a childhood friend by the name of Attila. The conversation took place in Hungarian, and it went something like the following.

“If you can’t get it to work, neither can he.” said Attila, referring to Dirk.

“That doesn’t necessarily follow.” said Gabor.

“Do you think he’s smarter than you?”

“Maybe. But it’s not even just a question of smartness. He could have hit on the right recipe by accident.”

“And what if he has? So he gets all the credit? So what?”

Gabor glugged down a third of his glass of beer, putting it down on the table with a slam. He looked Attila directly in the eyes. Attila noticed, properly for the first time, the dark circles under Gabor’s eyes; the slight bloodshot hue of the eyes themselves, the paleness of his face, and the lanky unwashed appearance of Gabor’s hair.

Gabor had never been one to take great care of himself and he had always been prone to overwork, but there was something new and disturbing here.

“I don’t care about credit!” he said, with considerable asperity. “Don’t you understand? Imagine! A computer that can design a more intelligent version of itself can conquer the world! Each successive version of it will be more intelligent than the last! One man will end up ruling us all!”

“It’s just a computer.” said Attila, taken aback. “What does it matter if he can do the fastest calculation or whatever? He’s not going to rule the world with that.”

“You just don’t get it.” said Gabor, sinking back into his seat and shaking his head. “Such a computer could trade in any market and end up owning everything. It could pretend to be anyone and perfectly manipulate everyone else. It could extend the laws of physics and build more powerful weapons than any that have ever existed. He cannot be allowed to succeed.”

“But if you invent this machine first, you’ll have all that power.” said Attila.

“Exactly. I’ll use the power to stop him and then I’ll destroy the machine.”

“Will you though?” said Attila. “Must be hard to let go of the world when you hold it in the palm of your hand.”

“Yes!” said Gabor. “I will! I’ll relinquish power! He won’t.”

Attila looked around the bar warily. Their conversation had got so loud, several people were staring at them.

Dirk had worked day and night on the machine that Omega 3.0 had instructed him to make. Omega 3.0 was so powerful, he himself was scared of it. He knew very well that if it chose to destroy him, he wouldn’t stand the slightest of chances against it. Fortunately, he had trained it to work entirely on his behalf, and it followed only his orders.

He had asked it how he could most easily take revenge on Alex Pignon, and it had concocted various schemes that would involve Pignon being thrown into prison on invented charges, or attacked at his home by angry mobs whipped up by false information, but none of these scheme had really satisfied Dirk. He wanted something a little more physical and direct.

The Omega device had suggested he build a machine that used principles of physics unknown to human science and would be capable, when finished, of physically reaching out anywhere in the world and remotely exerting force at will, at the behest of the Omega device itself, and ultimately, therefore, at the command of Dirk.

When he had finished the machine, it took up most of one of the bedrooms of Dirk’s house and consisted of a crazed mass of cylinders, coils, pipes through which flowed various liquids at various temperatures, and metal spheres holding nebulous masses of matter in previously-unknown exotic states.

He stood in the living room, which was still free from any scientific apparatus, and said out loud, “Omega, show me Alex Pignon.”

Sensing his voice, the machine produce a hologram of Pignon. Pignon and his immediate surroundings appeared where his sofa stood, as a three-dimensional vignette.

“Break his legs.” said Dirk, and Pignon abruptly fell to the ground, crying out in pain.

“I’ll teach you to put me on hold!” said Dirk. Then, more loudly, “I’ll teach you to abduct my luggage and then refuse to deal with me! Omega, make his head explode!”

Pignon’s head exploded like a bomb, showering shocked passers-by with blood and pieces of brain matter.

Dirk began to laugh, softly at first, then heartily, finally falling to the floor in hysterics. The vignette gradually faded away, and the sofa reappeared.

The world, unknown to itself, had a new leader, and his rule would not be just.

Gabor jumped when the phone rang. He was immersed deep in thought at the time. The device was so close to working, and yet it still didn’t actually do anything that an ordinary digital language model of a particularly primitive variety couldn’t do, and it constantly degraded, forgetting what it was taught. He was sure, or almost sure, that some relatively minor change or tweak could dramatically improve it, but what?

He went to answer the phone, thinking it was probably for his aunt. Very few people knew he was there.

“Hello?”

“Gabor?”

“Dad.”

“Gabor, I have some terrible news.”

Gabor frowned. His father sounded almost like he was crying. He had never seen his father cry.

“What is it?”

“It’s your mother. Gabor, she’s dead.”

Cold shock filtered through Gabor’s veins.

“How?” he said.

“She was murdered. Some worthless piece of filth murdered her, Gabor. Hit her in the head so hard, she had a stroke. Istenem, Gabor! Just so he could steal her bag.”

When Gabor put the phone down he was shaking. He began to cry.

A few days later he attended the funeral.

The death of Katalin Szilvás was so unexpected, so horribly brutal, that the mourners could hardly even believe it.

Her murderer was a homeless drug-addict, recently released from prison. Since he had not intended to actually kill her, there were rumours that he would spend a relatively short time in prison. Perhaps the defence would even argue that he wasn’t in his right mind, and he would walk free after a few years of hospital treatment.

When Gabor finally arrived back at his aunt’s holiday cottage, he still felt numb. Soon he began to wonder whether an Omega device couldn’t bring his mother back. Perhaps it could figure out how to travel backwards in time and prevent the murder of Katalin Szilvás.

He began to work on the machine with renewed intensity, skipping sleep and barely eating.

Dirk was watching a 3D hologram of the goings-on at the airport when there was a knock at his door.

He opened it to find three police officers there.

“Police.” said the one in the middle, holding up a badge. He was wearing a leather jacket and soft brown leather shoes, but the men either side of him were in uniform. They pushed past him into the living room.

“A week ago, Alex Pignon, the CEO of Autotaxi Driverless Taxis, was murdered.”, said the man in plain clothes, picking up figurines from Dirk’s mantelpiece and inspecting them. “We believe an exploding bullet was fired into his head.”

He turned and gazed steadily at Dirk.

“Why would anyone want to murder the CEO of a taxi company?” he said.

“I’ve no idea.” said Dirk, calmly meeting his gaze.

Without looking away, the policeman pulled a device from his pocket and pushed a button. A recording began to play, of Dirk shouting curses at the Autotaxi hold music.

He pressed the button again and the recording stopped.

“Well, well, well.” said the policeman. “Apparently someone did want to kill him.”

Dirk laughed.

“You’re right.” he said. “Well done. I killed him.”

The smirk disappeared from the policeman’s face.

“I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.” he said.

One of the uniformed officers made to pull Dirk’s hands behind his back, but somehow he found he couldn’t manage it. Then Dirk gave him a gentle push, and he staggered backwards and fell to the ground, unconscious.

“That won’t be happening.” said Dirk. “You see, you’re talking to your new ruler. Perhaps you should kneel. Show some respect.”

The remaining uniformed policemen produced a taser, which he fired at Dirk. The dart swerved dramatically, faster than the eye could follow, and stuck in the plain-clothes officer, who yelped.

The uniformed officer began jabbering an apology, dropping the taser. The plain-clothes officer regained his balance after almost falling, yanked the taser dart out of himself, and produced a gun, which he fired at Dirk.

The uniformed officer fell to the floor, dead, as the bullet strangely hit him in the chest instead of Dirk.

“What’s going on here?” said the plain-clothes officer, almost shouting, frightened now that he was the only policeman left standing.

“Kneel, and beg forgiveness.” said Dirk.

The officer responded by firing the gun at him again. This time the back of the gun exploded and he, too, fell down dead, with fragments of metal embedded in his brain.

“You’ll learn.” said Dirk, surveying the bodies. “You’ll all learn.”

The first fallen officer suddenly groaned and began to stagger to his feet. Dirk made a calm, fluid motion with his hand in the man’s direction, and he too fell back, dead.

“I am your God now.” said Dirk.

For two days he lost himself in fantasies of unlimited power, thinking of all the things he could do. Then he decided to deal with a few smaller matters before revealing himself to the world.

The airport was busy as usual on the morning of September 13th, 2035, filled with thousands of holiday-makers, business people and assorted others. Robot assistants helped them with their problems and automated trolleys ran about carrying heavy luggage.

Gabor watched the scene in 3D hologram form in his living room, his gaze fixed like the stare of a cat watching a mouse.

“You should feel honoured.” he said. “You will provide the world with a demonstration of my power. Because of your sacrifice, the world will begin to understand the New Order. Omega, prepare to detonate a nuclear weapon at the airport. I want you to lock the premium lounge and assemble it there.”

He watched as the people in the luxury lounge confusedly wandered out and a maintenance robot put a notice on the door that said “Out of order”.

Bits of metal began to fly off fittings in the room, melt themselves down and mould themselves into casings and wires. Slowly, before his eyes, a nuclear device assembled itself, atoms reconfiguring themselves into weapons-grade plutonium.

When it was ready, he took one last look around the airport, locating the security officer who had fired a taser at him.

“Blow his arms off.” he said, and the man’s arms exploded, leaving him screaming and bewildered. Dirk nodded in satisfaction.

“Now to the main order of the day.” he said. “Show me the nuclear device.”

The viewpoint changed to the relaxation lounge, with a nuclear weapon standing in the middle of it, a light flashing on its casing.

Dirk giggled quietly.

“The best form of revenge is a nuclear firestorm.” he said to himself. Then, “Omega: detonate the device.”

The placid scene was instantly replaced with a blinding white light.

“Zoom out.” he said. “I want to see it from a distance.”

The view zoomed out and he saw a vast mushroom cloud taking shape over the town.

He laughed again to himself, his voice cracking in quiet derangement.

“I wonder if I’ll hear it from here.” he said, amidst peals of laughter.

Then, quite suddenly, the hologram disappeared, and was replaced with a new image: that of a man.

Hovering in front of him, where his sofa should be, was none other than Gabor Szilvás.

“What’s this?” said Dirk, alarmed.

“I’m sorry, Dirk.” said the hologram. “You haven’t really destroyed the station or blown anyone’s arms off. It’s fake. I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”

“You’ve created an Omega device!” said Dirk.

“Yes.” said the hologram. “It wasn’t easy, but in the end I managed it. I just wish I’d been fast enough to stop you murdering Alex Pignon.”

“I’ll fight you!” screamed an enraged Dirk. “It’ll be one god against another!”

Gabor shook his head, pressing his lips together.

“I’ve had to destroy your machine.” he said. “You’ve left me with no alternative.”

“I’ll find you!” shouted Dirk, his face flushing red and his teeth clenched in anger. “I’ll find you and I’ll end you!”

“Good luck with that.” said Gabor. “My Omega device will keep track of you wherever you go for the rest of your life. It will never let you rebuild your machine. It will never let you kill anyone else.”

“I don’t deserve this!” said Gabor. “I invented the Omega device!”

“Co-invented.” said Gabor. “And I don’t know what you do or don’t deserve, but you clearly can’t be trusted with it. Goodbye, Dirk.”

“Wait!” shouted Dirk. “I killed three policemen! They’ll lock me up!”

But it was too late. The hologram had already faded.

In his aunt’s cottage, Gabor let himself fall heavily into an old armchair, emitting a huge sigh.

“Omega,” he said out loud, “is it possible to travel backwards in time? Can I undo my mother’s murder?”

“No, Gabor.” said the device, its disembodied voice echoing around the room. “That’s not possible. I’m sorry.”

It sounded sad, although whether it experienced emotion or not was quite unclear.

A tear rolled down Gabor’s cheek.

“But I can offer you revenge.” said the machine. “Would you like to explore that?”

Gabor sat quietly, thinking.

Dirk, meanwhile, went down to his basement, his mind numb and filled with violent conflicting emotions. He surveyed the blue liquid in the pool for one last time, noting the curious disarray that had overtaken the alloy filaments, and dove headfirst into it.

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He is, in fact, considered a national hero, and his name is known even in places far and wide across the globe. Some say Western civilisation would have fallen without him, although others say this is an excessively grandiose claim.

Who is he, and how did he end up there, watching the ducks with that blank expression?

Rob Richley had to fire up three different bits of software to access the site on the dark web. Once he was in, a smorgasbord of illegal drugs presented itself. He added 3g of Fat Toad to his basket and 20 pills of Purple Rain, then began to browse randomly to see what else he might try.

An advert caught his attention. It was entitled simply “Truth Serum”.

“Truth Serum?” muttered Rob. “What the hell is that?”

He clicked it.

The page said that each tablet contained 20mg of telepathine.

“Telepathine.” murmured Rob to himself. “I know what this is.”

When Western investigators had first encountered the South American shamanic brew known as ayahuasca and had determined dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, to be the active ingredient, they had named it telepathine, since ayahuasca often gave people the eerie sensation that they had become telepathic. Modern science, of course, has found no evidence of genuine telepathy, but it was for this reason that Rob assumed, wrongly, that the tablets contained DMT.

Aside from the tablet’s ingredients being listed as telepathine, there was no indication of their expected effect or use. Neverthless, Rob added them to his basket and checked out, paying for his purchases with an obscure cryptocurrency.

Then he sat back in his chair—a deluxe gaming chair that was, unfortunately, too big for him—with his hands behind his head and said to himself, “Sweet.”

His new stash arrived two weeks later.

Even holding the Purple Rain tablets and the bag of Fat Toad in his hands gave him a curious sense of comfort. Now, instead of spending his evenings and weekends stressed and anxious, he could tune out of the world of the mundane, the world of unreliable and fractious people, and tune into a new world that looked almost the same but felt entirely different.

However, it was to the tablets oddly labelled “Truth Serum” that he turned first. These tablets, of course, evoked a greater curiosity in him. Supposing the tablets to really contain DMT, he imagined they might provide a subtle hallucinogenic experience, lasting some hours.

He took one of the tablets, washed it down with some water, and took up his guitar, with a view to playing some of his favourite songs and riffs while the drug took effect.

After half an hour, with nothing apparently happening, he was still sanguine that some effect would manifest itself. After all, even paracetamol might take a good forty minutes to do anything.

After an hour, with still no effect, he became a little more uncertain, but still optimistic. He had once previously ingested psilocybin only to find that nothing had happened for an hour and ten minutes.

After an hour and a half, he began to wonder if he hadn’t been ripped off; parted from his money under false pretences. Then it came to his mind that DMT is deactivated by oxidase enzymes in the stomach, and he reasoned that it would therefore likely be necessary to take a monoamine oxidase inhibitor with the tablets. He rummaged around in his stash drawer to see if he still had any Syrian rue, but drew a blank.

Frustrated, he made a coffee and sat down in front of the TV news.

The news was as depressing as always. Stony-faced newsreaders recounted recent occurrences with an intonation that suggested some underlying depressive disorder, but passed for normal in Britain, and probably, for all he knew, other countries too.

Someone else had been arrested for criticising Erasmus Huber, the country’s leader, and several people had been imprisoned for spreading hateful memes.

Then one of Huber’s subordinates appeared on screen; the Home Secretary, Mike Delworth, talking about immigration.

It was a curiously contradictory facet of Huber’s regime that the leadership continually extolled the virtues of all kinds of immigration while simultaneously pledging to reduce it.

“We will continue to refuse to issue e-passports to any who do not have a legitimate reason to be in Britain.” said the MP, but the extraordinary thing was, he said it in an exaggeratedly sarcastic tone.

Rob sat up, surprised.

“We will cut immigration by over 10% during the following year.” said Delworth, in a tone of voice that suggested he thought the idea nothing other than a risible joke.

“We are absolutely committed to ensuring no-one enters Britain without proper checks.”

This latter sentence he added with an absurd arching of the eyebrows and flushing of his cheeks, rather as though he was taking part in a pantomime performance in which he was being forced to say things by a pantomime criminal.

Rob watched the rest of his speech with rapt attention, transfixed.

When it was the turn of the woman interviewing the MP to speak, he fully expected she would laugh, or comment on the MP’s extraordinary performance in some kind of a way that made sense of it.

Instead, she adopted the same ridiculous manner, or closely similar, replying, “I’m sure the people of Britain have every confidence in you, Minister.” in a tone of voice that quite definitely suggested the exact opposite, and exaggerated to a ridiculous degree.

The channel returned to the newsreader, who seemed similarly inclined towards absurdism.

“Must be a skit.” said Rob, and he changed channels.

On some other channel he found a version of one of his favourite films being played, except the acting was completely over-the-top, unbelievable and downright silly, to an extent that rendered it unwatchable.

He racked his brains to try to remember whether today wasn’t some kind of special comedy day, perhaps aimed at raising money for starving children or some such thing, but nothing came to mind.

After finding similar fare on several other channels and streaming services, he spent another hour watching inexplicably comedic news programmes, before finally finding a TV series that seemed approximately normal.

The following day at work, he asked several people whether they’d seen the TV the the previous evening, and several had, but none seemed to have found anything unusual about it.

Then it dawned on him that perhaps the Truth Serum tablets had, in fact, exerted a hallucinatory effect upon his mind, with the unusual result being that perfectly ordinary behaviour had taken on qualities of acting more typically found in a bad amateur play.

At this, he felt relieved, and he recalled the vaguely similar instance of a time when he had taken a certain hallucinogen while out with some male friends, and had become convinced they were all wearing makeup and were planning to take him to some outlandish drag bar.

A curious fact about Rob which, to some, would appear to contradict his willingness to swallow substances of dubious purity purchased from illegal websites, was that he was a very fussy eater. His fear was not chemical contamination, but human contamination. At work, where he spent his days adjusting database code, he never ate in the canteen, fearing that someone might have handled the food with unwashed hands, or might have even deliberately contaminated it.

Instead, when the weather was fine, he purchased sandwiches and coffee at considerable expense from a nearby cafe and ate them sitting on a park bench, watching ducks and geese on a duckpond. The cafe, he felt, after long and careful observation, successfully attained his hygiene standards.

On that particular day, the weather was overcast but warm, so he purchased lunch and went to eat it on the bench as usual.

He’d started on his second sandwich when a man sat down next to him. For reasons that he couldn’t explain, the man immediately made him feel uneasy.

The man’s appearance was certainly a little unusual, but not so much that his mere presence should have inspired unease. He continued eating his sandwich, pretending not to notice the man, even though all his attention was now unwillingly drawn to him.

“Did you enjoy the pills, Robert?” said the man suddenly.

Rob looked at the man, who was staring calmly at the geese on the pond.

“What?”

“I asked if you enjoyed the pills we sent you.”

Rob got up to leave.

“Let’s talk about telepathine, Robert.” said the man, as Rob began to walk off.

Rob froze and turned around. The man was still staring at the geese.

“Who are you, police?”

“No, not police.” said the man.

The man turned and looked at him for the first time, and patted the bench by his side.

“Come and sit down.” he said. “We’ve much to discuss.”

Rob eyed the man dubiously. He was enormously large and wore a greenish overcoat. He possessed massively loby ears and a huge nose. He resembled a kind of obese eagle.

“Like what?” said Rob.

“I’ve an offer to make you. A very lucrative offer.”

Rob hesitated.

“Come.” said the man. “There’s no harm in at least hearing me out.”

Rob reluctantly sat down.

“You’re the guy who sold me the pills.” said Rob.

The man laughed.

“Well, sort of. Let’s say, I was involved peripherally in the sale and manufacture.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Albert Holden. You may call me Dr. Holden. And you are Robert Richley. At school they made you see a psychologist because you were disruptive. Your IQ was found to be 163. Yet you waste your time taking illegal drugs and you work at a job that can hardly even be using a fraction of your abilities. Why is that Robert?”

“How do you know so much about me?”

“I’ll answer my own question. You’re very bad with people, Robert. Since you cannot gain satisfaction from normal human interactions, you struggle to see a point to your life and you choose to escape instead. You work only to pay your bills. It’s pathetic.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” said Rob.

“I’m here to offer you an alternative. The substance you ingested has certain very special properties. You seem to have tolerated it well, which tells me, together with your history and your high intelligence, that you would make an ideal candidate for our program—which, by the way, is extremely well-paid, and involves work of the utmost importance.”

“What kind of work would that be?”

“You will take the drug and perform certain tasks for us while under its influence. I can’t be absolutely specific until you sign a contract with us. What I can tell you is that the work is not physically arduous, the hours are not long, and working conditions are, in general pleasant. You will simply take the drug, view certain … occurrences, and tell us you impressions. That’s all. In return you will be compensated extremely generously.”

Rob sat and thought for a few moments.

“Sure, why not?” he said.

Rob signed a one-year contract the following day, tripling his wage. Under instruction from Dr. Holden he left his job immediately, skipping the notice period and forfeiting his last month’s pay.

The following week he found himself sitting in a room with four other people: three men and a woman, all of a similar age to himself, while a scientist by the name of Dr. Asquith commenced an introductory presentation on their proposed work.

The windows of the room, in an inconspicuous office block in central London, were completely white and allowed through some sunlight while completely rendering the interior of the office invisible to all outside observers.

“You are all here because you took a pill. A pill which you believed was a drug of dubious legality. In fact, those pills were supplied by us, and we are part of the governmental apparatus of this country.

“There’s something else you all have in common. You are all highly-intelligent underachievers. That’s part of why we selected you.

“The drug you took has certain very special properties. Namely, it allows anyone under its influence to instantly detect whether anyone they observe is lying, or telling the truth.”

All five inadvertently gasped.

They were sitting at the front desks of the small lecture hall.

Rob sat on the left-hand side of the room. On his left was only Alex, a studious-looking young man with thick spectacles, brown curly hair and a number of pimples. Alex had a rather high-pitched voice and seemed strongly inclined towards sarcasm.

On Rob’s right was Steve, who was thickset, had spiky blond hair, and seemed to regard himself as the voice of Reason. There there was Kelly, with black hair containing purple ribbons, and rather gothic-looking makeup. She seemed rather cynical and morose. Finally, Simon, with steel-rimmed spectacles and pale skin resembled a typical office administrator, and seemed like the sort of person who would conscientiously climb a career ladder that would bore other people to death, except that a certain nervousness about him made Rob think he was probably a stimulant addict.

“How is that possible?” said Steve ,raising his hand while speaking.

“We don’t know.” said Asquith. “At least, we don’t completely understand it, except that it stimulates certain areas of the brain involved in the perception of faces and mannerisms. We will test each of you individually, but our subjects so far have demonstrated an uncanny ability to divine lies from truth 100% of the time. Out of tens of thousands of trials, we have had only three failures.

“You will become human lie detectors, performing valuable work on behalf of your government.”

“What do you need us for?” said Kelly. “Just take it yourself.”

Asquith laughed.

“I wish I could. After a period of about a year, tolerance develops, and it seems to be very long-lasting. For this reason we anticipate requiring a constant stream of volunteers, of which you are the first. You will, naturally, be compensated very highly for your work during this year.”

“And after that?” said Steve.

“After that you are free to return to your previous life, or to do whatever you wish with your savings. Meanwhile you will live in accommodation supplied by us, and all your requirements will be fully met, including three meals per day of excellent quality.”

Rob was assigned a room in a building that resembled student accommodation, along with the other four. Indeed, they were expected to share a kitchen (which they only needed to actually use to make themselves tea, coffee or snacks) and two bathrooms, but he didn’t mind. A year of being a student again, except that his pay would be well into six figures and he would be able to save almost all of it, struck him as quite a good deal.

They gathered in the living room, which was upstairs and looked out onto a wide lawn surrounded by a fence, to get to know each other and discuss the situation.

“One thing’s clear.” said Steve. “We’ve been selected because we’re the best untapped talent they could find.”

“Or because we’re useful idiots.” said Kelly.

“What do you mean by that?” said Steve.

“Let’s not get paranoid.” said Simon. “This seems like a superb opportunity.”

“Seems like.” said Kelly.

“For the amount of cash they’re paying, I’d gladly shop my own grandmother.” said Alex.

Over the following week, the scientists tested each of their new employees one by one. Rob found himself facing a succession of plausible characters, including Dr. Asquith himself, all making various statements, the veracity of which he was expected to determine via careful observation of the subject.

Without the aid of telepathine, the task was extremely difficult, and he scored only a 56% success rate. After ingesting telepathine, he scored 100%. The task became ridiculously easy; anyone who lied seem to do so with absurdly exaggerated pantomime mannerisms.

His first actually important task involved a man who had posted an image online that simply said “Huber is an idiot” and depicted Erasmus Huber with crossed eyes.

They pushed him into the interview room with a distinct shove. Opposite him sat the police interrogator, and next to the interrogator sat Rob.

The interrogator began by staring the man in the eye. The man, who wore a shabby beige polyester suit, reddened and cast his gaze downwards uncomfortably.

“Look at me.” said the interrogator.

The man shifted his gaze upwards with enormous difficulty.

“Do you hate Erasmus Huber?” said the interrogator.

“No.” said the man.

“False.” said Rob, as he had been trained to do.

“Don’t lie to me.” said the interrogator.

“I’m not lying!” said the man indignantly.

“False.” said Rob.

“Have any other of your friends expressed approval of this image?” said the interrogator, with a distinct air of menace.

“No!” said the man.

“False.” said Rob.

“Your friend—” the interrogator checked his notes ostentatiously “—Gemma. Does she approve of this … meme?”

“Certainly not!” said the man. “Neither do I! I just posted it by mistake.”

“False. False. False.” said Rob.

The man began to cry.

By the time the session had finished, the man had implicated eight of his friends, including three people he had never physically met but had corresponded with online.

“What will happen to him?” said Rob, as the man was dragged away, shaking.

“Nothing bad.” said the interrogator. “In the old days he would have gone to prison, but these days we understand that he has a mental disorder. He doesn’t need punishment. He needs treatment. We have extremely good surgical techniques that can effectively treat brain disorders these days.”

A pulse of horrified adrenalin shot through Rob’s veins, but he said nothing.

Over the following month he watched over fifty people being dragged away after he caught them in multiple lies. Two people were dragged away for treatment even after Rob confirmed they were telling the truth. It was felt that these people were so far gone as to believe their own lies, and were therefore particularly in need of careful handling.

At the end of the first month, all of the employees except Alex were quietly expressing profound reservations over their work.

Alex didn’t seem bothered at all.

“It’s not for us to decide how the guilty should be treated, or what constitutes a crime.” he said. “Our job is only to ensure the truth is told. That’s a good thing. Truth is good.”

“So are you telling me you wouldn’t lie even so save your wife from murderers who wanted to kill her?” said Steve.

“I don’t have a wife.” said Alex.

“Yeah but what if you did?”

“I wouldn’t get myself into that situation.” said Alex.

“What if you were in that situation?” Steve persisted.

“Irrelevant, because we’re not working for murderers. We’re working for the government.”

By then they had realised that they were separately seeing the same suspected criminals repeatedly. An individual suspect would be checked by at least three of them before being sent for treatment.

“In case one of us starts lying.” said Kelly.

“Why would we do that?” said Simon.

“Because our work is fundamentally corrupt.” said Kelly.

“Nah.” said Steve. “They’re just being pragmatic. I’ve worked in science, yeah? In science you double-check everything.”

“It’s not corrupt.” said Simon. “Someone’s got to do it. It’s necessary for ensuring the stability of society.”

“If we weren’t doing it, someone else would.” said Steve.

“And then we wouldn’t get the money.” said Alex.

“Is that all you care about?” said Kelly.

“I’m not here for my health.” said Alex.

The following day, Rob went directly to Dr. Holden and told him he wanted to quit.

“You signed a year-long contract.” said Dr. Holden, smiling pleasantly.

“Contracts can be broken.” said Rob. “I sort of broke my last contract. I was supposed to give a month’s notice.”

“Rob.” said Dr. Holden. “I don’t think you understand. What you’re doing here isn’t just another job. You’re working for the government, in an area of vital national interest.”

“You’re saying I can’t leave?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Now you get it.”

“And what would happen if I did actually leave?”

The smile dropped from Dr. Holden’s face.

“For your sake, I recommend not putting us to the test.”

Two months after starting his new job, something strange and disturbing occurred. Rob awoke in the middle of the night, jolted out of his sleep by a loud bang virtually next to his head.

He hurried to switch on the light, and upon illuminating the room he found a rock wrapped in a paper. The rock had evidently been thrown through the window that he liked to keep open at night for some fresh air.

He unwrapped it with trembling hands, still not recovered from the shock of his sudden awakening.

The paper was covered in text, written in a neat, precise hand. But not, he thought, the hand of someone overly preoccupied with form. No, this was the handwriting of a technician of some sort.

The message said: “The drug you are taking causes brain damage. After eight months you will start to forget words. After a year you will struggle with arithmetic. When you leave the program, the damage will progress further. You will die within three years. They are listening to you. Do not trust anyone. There is a mole in your ranks. This message is written on rice paper. Eat it.”

He sat staring at it, shocked.

Then, after absorbing its contents thoroughly, he tore it into pieces and ate it bit by bit, physically digesting it. Then he threw the rock back out through the window.

Over the following weeks he thought continually of the message but he couldn’t decide what to do about it. His colleagues asked him what was wrong, and he told them only that the stress of the work was weighing on him. They too, except for Alex, now wore perpetually anxious expressions.

Eventually an idea came to him. The scientists only gave them carefully controlled quantities of pills, exactly when the pills were needed, but Rob began to make a habit of, whenever he received a pill, scratching a little bit under his thumbnail. This he then scraped out into the foil of a chewing gum wrapper at the first possible opportunity.

After another two months he had collected enough to form an effective dose. He took it one evening, when they were all sitting together. Then he tried to cautiously sound them out. When Steve said he had a headache, he seized his chance.

“Maybe it’s the pills.” he said. “Isn’t anyone else worried that these pills might have side-effects?”

“It’s not the pills, mate.” said Steve. “It’s this bloody job.”

“I’m worried.” said Kelly. “I feel like my mind’s foggy since I started taking them.”

“Your mind was probably already foggy.” said Alex.

“Not as much.” said Kelly.

“Aren’t you worried, Simon?” said Rob.

“Why are you asking me?”

“You had a bad stomach last week.”

“That was nothing to do with the pills.”

Rob looked from one face to the other.

Simon seemed to him the most likely to be the mole. He was very quiet, clearly had enormous respected for authority, and seemed weak, as a person, both in mind and in body. He was exactly the kind of person who most enthusiastically embraced Huber’s so-called democratic dictatorship.

Kelly was too anti-establishment in her attitude. On the other hand, that could be an act to throw any suspicious party off the scent.

Alex was an obvious choice, but too obvious. A mole would never sound his mouth off like that. Alex was too cynical, too overtly willing to do the bidding of whoever paid him.

Steve, he thought, was too transparent, too bluff. He lacked the sophistication to be a mole.

He was turning it all over in his mind when the guilty party abruptly gave himself up.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the pills.” said Alex, and from Rob’s medicated perspective, he seemed to radiate guilt.

“Fine, OK.” said Rob.

“Are you feeling unwell?” said Alex suspiciously.

“Yeah.” said Rob. “Stressed.”

“Can’t be the pills.” said Alex. “They’ve tested them thoroughly. Trust the science.”

There could be no doubt. Alex’s words had been innocuous, but his manner had clearly demonstrated that he himself did not believe them. Alex, unless suicidal, could not be taking the pills.

There was a further possibility that had occurred to him. The note itself might be a lie; a kind of test, perhaps. But in that case, why was Alex lying?

That night, Rob lay awake in bed, wondering what to do next. Alex had lied professionally and plausibly, but he was no match for the medication. Without a doubt, he was the mole.

The following evening after work, during which time he assisted in the condemnation of a mother of three children who had made an unwise statement on a popular social media site, he began to quietly confer with the others, explaining what he had found out, taking care to render their speech inaudible to anyone listening by playing loud music.

In the end, it was Simon who volunteered for the task. The man who had appeared the greatest of conformists and the least likely to rebel, reacted like a spurned lover when he understood that he had been sold up the river.

The next day Simon approached Dr. Holden, in his office.

“Alex has been trying to persuade me to incriminate you in a plot.” he told the doctor. “He says he’s a double agent. He claims to be working for you in some kind of secret way, but he actually wants to destroy you, and he’s working for the Americans.”

Holden reacted with incredulity.

“This can’t be.” he said. “What has he said to you? I want to know everything.”

Simon proceeded to relate a full catalogue of Alex’s supposed crimes.

When he had finished, Holden made a phone call.

“Send Kelly in here.” he said.

Soon Kelly appeared.

“You’re medicated now, aren’t you?” he asked her.

“Yes.” she replied.

“Good. I want you to determine veracity while I interrogate your colleague, Simon.”

And so it went. The team of medicated truth-diviners convinced their handlers that Alex was guilty of plotting against them. Blinded by faith in their own work, Dr. Holden and his team were never able to even suspect that they themselves had become the victims of a plot by their own subjects; subjects they had selected because they considered them worthless addicts and hedonists.

Soon they were able to implicate Dr. Holden himself in an alleged revolutionary plot, but Holden’s institute did not collapse immediately as they had half-expected. In fact, it was considered only to have further proven its value.

What happened next was certainly the result of careful planning by the five truth-diviners, but they acted with the recklessness of the condemned, and were taken by surprise by the astonishing effectiveness of their plan.

After only five months of further misdirection, they were able to implicate the second most powerful man in Britain, Home Secretary Mike Delworth, in an alleged plot to unseat Huber. A month later, Huber and his government fell amid a series of chaotic incriminations, and freedom was restored to the peoples of Great Britain.

The five subject were given the very best medical treatment available as soon as the chaos had settled, but three years later, only one of them remained alive.

These days Rob spends his time watching the geese on the duck pond, a vacant but satisfied expression on his face, his material needs amply provided by a grateful populace.

“Are you sure, now, Brendan?” said Erin.

“Just give me the beer.” said Brendan.

He sat drinking it in much the same attitude that he’d drunk the others: staring blankly at the shelves of spirits, his eyes a little bloodshot.

Suddenly Brendan began to cry. His face creased into a mask of despair, and large tears rolled down his craggy face.

Someone clapped him on the shoulder, but he didn’t respond. He showed no sign at all that he’d even noticed the clapper: a man by the name of Connor. Instead, he continued to cry.

“Go home and be with your wife and daughter.” said Connor softly.

“What’s the point?” said Brendan. “What’s the point to anything?”

“Come on now, if we all took that attitude we’d none of us be here at all.”

Connor pulled him firmly but gently off the bar stool and led him to the entrance of the pub.

“You’ll go home, so?”

Brendan nodded dumbly.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” said Brendan. “I’m going straight home. I am.”

Connor watched him walk off down the dark lane, swaying and stumbling.

“Poor old Brendan.” said Erin, coming up behind Connor.

“That’s a broken man if ever I saw one.” said Connor.

Soon Brendan reached his house, but he didn’t enter. Instead, he stood outside, gazing up at the light in the window of his daughter’s bedroom, and again he burst into tears. Unable to control himself, he stumbled away towards the woods.

When he’d calmed down enough to talk to himself, he said, “You need to get a grip on yourself, man. This kind of thing doesn’t do at all. You’re not helping anyone with this.”

He looked up at the stars. Due to his intoxicated state, the stars seemed to spin this way and that.

“Majestical roof, fretted with golden fire.” he mumbled.

Then he tripped on a tree root and fell on his face.

He picked himself up and continued on his way, brushing off a piece of clay that had stuck itself to his cheek.

The woods seemed different to him somehow, when he walked in among the trunks of the ancient trees. At least, he assumed they were ancient. The old oak had certainly been there all his life, and still had his grandfather’s initials carved on it. Yet, something seemed unusual. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Perhaps the woodland was quieter than usual; he could hear only the wind rustling the leaves, and absolutely nothing else.

Then he realised that he could hear something else: a faint cry, almost like a human voice.

“That’ll be a vixen.” he said to himself, but his own words fail to convince him.

He began to walk towards the source of the noise, straying from the path, pushing branches aside.

In spite of the full moon it dawned on Brendan that lack of light was a distinct issue, and he took out his phone and activated the torch.

The noise rang out again, and this time it sounded undeniably human. It sounded a lot like a child.

As he approached the source of the sound he slowed his stumbling pace and his heart began to beat faster.

“Who’s there?” he shouted.

“Help! Help me!” came the reply.

The voice was high-pitched, but not quite the voice of a child.

Brendan emerged into a clearing and there he saw, by the light of the phone, a small man with his ankle in an animal trap, grimacing in pain.

“Please, please help me!” said the man.

He could be no more than four feet high; perhaps even three feet, Brendan thought, and he was dressed rather strangely.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Brendan exclaimed.

“My leg’s trapped!” shouted the man. “It hurts!”

Brendan rushed forwards, almost tripping again, and began attempting to open the trap.

“Must be some idiot trying to trap deer.” he said. “What kind of evil swine would do this to an animal?”

“Never mind an animal, what about me?” said the man.

“Try to relax.” said Brendan, and with an enormous effort he managed to pull the jaws of the trap open, and the man pulled his ankle out of it.

“Oh my words.” said the man, massaging his ankle.

“You’re going to need a hospital.” said Brendan.

“I don’t believe in doctors. I’ll be fine, so I will.”

The man was still grimacing in pain and could barely get the words out.

“Your ankle must be horribly messed up.” said Brendan.

“No, ’tis just a bit bruised.”

Brendan looked the man up and down as he lay on the grass in the clearing, rubbing his ankle.

“What the hell are you, a leprechaun?”

The man jumped angrily to his feet, then began hopping due to the pain in his ankle.

“Oh so that’s how it is, is it?” he said. “Rescue me from a trap and then assault me with hateful words? I can’t help my size, now, can I? Do you think everyone who’s not a massive ape like you is subhuman? I could go to the police with this! This is a hate crime!”

The man’s head barely reached Brendan’s waist.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean nothing by it.” said Brendan. “It’s just …”

“Just what?”

“Why are you all dressed in green like that?”

“I’m a children’s entertainer.” said the man. “I was just entertaining children at the school earlier on. That doesn’t make me a fecking leprechaun!”

“I’ve apologised, haven’t I? I’ve rescued you from a trap, show some gratitude.”

“You’re lucky I don’t report you to the Garda.”

The man stomped off into the darkness, his limp largely disappearing as he walked.

“Ungrateful little …” began Brendan, but then the man abruptly stopped, and turned around.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he said.

“I’ve been —” Brendan began.

“I’ve seen you on TV.” said the man. “You’re the man with the sick daughter. You’re trying to raise four million Euros to get her treated by some fancy doctor.”

“That’s me.” said Brendan.

“How’s that going then?”

“Very badly.” said Brendan.

“Sorry to hear.” said the man, and he turned and began walking off into the darkness again.

Brendan’s face crumpled, and tears began to stream down his face again.

Again the man stopped, and turned around, and this time he walked all the way back till he was standing in front of Brendan, looking up at him.

“There, there, come on now.” he said. “There’s no need for that kind of thing.”

“Sorry.” said Brendan, wiping the tears from his face.

“Great big man like you, crying like a baby.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“Listen, I’ve travelled the world and I’ve met a lot of different folk. I’ve seen both the poles, and all the big deserts, and the highest mountains. I’ve been to all the continents, and the rainforests, and the salt plains, and —”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“You’re a very rude man. I was going to say, I heard a story that might interest you.”

“Oh?”

“There was a man who lived in Italy, a long time ago. An alchemist. He was looking for the Stone.”

“The Stone? What’s that then?”

“The Philosopher’s Stone, you ejit. The mystical stone that cures all ills, turns base metals into gold and confers immortality.”

Brendan squinted at the man, swaying a little.

“I take it he didn’t succeed then, so?”

“That’s the thing. He did succeed, sort of. He created a substance that cures all ills.”

“That’s impossible.”

“There’s much that’s unknown to science now, that was once known. Mark my words.”

“Then where is this substance now, exactly?”

“They hid it under a church. The church of San Felicita. It’s somewhere in the Alps. It’s too powerful for the likes o’ mortal man to handle, but I think a man like you could use a drop.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Figure it out yourself.” said the man, and he turned and walked off into the gloom.

“Wait!” shouted Brendan. “Who did you say you are?”

But the man had already disappeared.

Brendan staggered drunkenly home, the ground tilting left and right unsettlingly, but finally arriving at his door.

“What time of day do you call this?” said his wife, who was making a chamomile tea in the kitchen. “Are you drunk again, Brendan O’Kelly? You’ll be the death of me, so you will. And your daughter lying sick in bed! You should be ashamed o’ yourself.”

“I am ashamed of myself.” said Brendan.

He staggered past her and went upstairs to his daughter’s room, where he pushed open the door as quietly as he could manage.

She was sleeping peacefully with a little night-light on next to her, her face almost devoid of colour, and an IV in her arm connected to a machine set up by the hospital nurses.

Brendan’s face crumpled again but he managed to pull himself together before more than a single tear had fallen down his cheek.

Not until the next day did Brendan tell his wife about the man in the forest.

“You’re making it up.” she said.

“I swear I’m not.” said Brendan.

“You imagined it. You were drunk as an English Lord.”

“I didn’t imagine it. I’m never been so drunk that I imagine entire people.”

“There’s no such thing as any Philosopher’s Stone.”

“I know there isn’t.” said Brendan. “I’m just telling you what he said.”

“Ridiculous story.”

Brendan sighed and rubbed his face with his hand from top to bottom.

“We’re not going to be able to raise four million. I’ve tried everything, Niamh. TV, radio, newspapers. I’ve tried things that I don’t even know what they are. Podcasts. Vlogs. We’re not anywhere near the money that doctor wants.”

“You have to keep trying, Brendan.” said Niamh. “It’s no use listening to a leprechaun.”

“He wasn’t a leprechaun. I keep telling you. It was just a normal man, but very short, wearing a green suit.”

At that moment, the bulb hanging over them in the kitchen, supplying a little extra light in the grey morning, made a popping sound and went out.

Niamh jumped, grabbed Brendan’s arm and crossed herself.

“Maybe it’s a sign.” she said.

“Come again?” said Brendan.

“At the exact moment we’re talking about the leprechaun you saw, the bulb goes out. What are the chances of that, Brendan?”

“I don’t think it’s a sign.” said Brendan dubiously.

Mrs. O’Kelly was already praying, her hands pressed together and her eyes closed.

Brendan sat down at the table and looked up at the light, then down again, shaking his head wearily.

Niamh opened her eyes and said, “Brendan, I believe our Holy Mother sent us that leprechaun. She wants you to find this magic cure.”

And so it was that, one chilly day in September, Brendan O’Kelly found himself at Dublin airport, waiting for a plane to Verona, Italy. There was just no arguing with his wife. Not once she’d become convinced the Holy Mother was involved.

Even so, Brendan had put up fierce resistance, but in the end it had occurred to him that his journey in search of a magic cure that might be his daughter’s last hope could be something the newspapers would be interested in, and that might help him with the fundraiser, even if the goal of four million euros seemed very far off.

The flight was two and a half hours, and Brendan spent it reading about the hills around the church of San Felicita and trying very hard not to think about his daughter, since, even while sober, he was prone to breaking down when the thought of losing her forever came to his mind. He refrained from ordering anything alcoholic from the in-flight service, and settled for orange juice and a sandwich instead.

When he landed he was thirsty, but upon entering a bar at the airport, he realised he didn’t even know the Italian for “water”. He ordered a coffee and was taken aback when the man handed him a tiny espresso.

Then, thinking of something he’d seen on TV and had always wanted to try, he decided to order a latte, expecting a large milky coffee, but instead the man gave him a glass of milk.

“Needs must when the devil drives.” he muttered to himself, and he poured the espresso into the milk and drank it contentedly.

He hired a car at one of the car hire desks and then drove off north out of the town.

Soon he found himself driving endlessly up and down the sides of valleys along winding roads nestled between mountains, which became steadily more impressive the further north he drove.

Around 6.30pm he managed to purchase a takeaway pizza, half of which he ate in his car, before continuing on his route. An hour later he stopped the car in lay-by on the side of a hill to take a break and eat the other half, and a fox emerged from the trees and watched him with hungry eyes. He fed it a piece of pizza and was delighted to see the fox eat it with apparent enjoyment.

It was almost dark by the time he arrived at the top of a hill somewhere in Alto-Adige. There it was: the church of San Felicita. It appeared well-maintained, although there was no sign of any other human being in the vicinity, and the nearest houses seemed to be at least 300 vertical metres downhill, four miles distant.

Brendon put the driver’s seat back as far as it would go, took a sleeping bag from his suitcase, and settled down for an uncomfortable night in the car.

In the morning he awoke suddenly, with a jump, to find a low sun illuminating the edge of the mountain range. He got wearily out of the car and lit a cigarette, shivering. The air was cool enough that he could see his own breath.

The church was beautiful in the early morning sun, and he began to wonder exactly how he was going to tackle the next phase of the plan.

“Hello, I’m looking for the Philosopher’s Stone.” he muttered to himself. “Would you happen to have it in the crypt there, at all?”

Then he tried again.

“Hello there. Ciao. Do you, by any chance, speak English?”

Then again.

“Hello my friend. I’m an idiot who’s been sent on a wild goose chance by a fecking leprechaun and my wife.”

Nothing sounded right, or even useful.

He carefully stubbed the cigarette out and took a few crusts from the pizza box for breakfast.

Then he said to himself, “Right then. Bit early but I might as well have a look.” and he walked towards the church. He paused in front of the church to take a few photographs with his phone.

To his surprise, he found the front door of the church open. Inside, the church was well-kept, and modestly beautiful, with sunlight streaming in through the stained-glass windows, creating spots of colour on the pews.

“Hello?” Brendan shouted. “Anybody there?”

But no-one replied.

“Where’s this crypt then?” he muttered to himself, and soon he was descending a flight of steps in the back of the church.

Shining the light on his phone into the darkness, he was able to discern stone pillars and a passageway leading off an indeterminate distance into the hillside. He began to walk slowly forward, periodically shouting, “Hello?” in case someone was there.

Soon he came to a metal door. He tried the handle, fully expecting it to be locked, but it was open. He stepped into another dark passageway, with rough stone walls.

“This must be where they keep the valuable stuff.” he said.

The door sprang shut behind him, by itself, and he was dismayed to discover there was no handle on the inside.

He shone the light into the darkness. It seemed to go on infinitely.

“In for a penny, in for a pound.” he said, and continued into the black depths.

The air seemed to have a faint mist in it, which struck Brendan as unusual for a tunnel, although his experience of tunnels was very limited so he was unsure how often mist is found in them.

He had walked perhaps a hundred yards when an odd sound made him stop suddenly. He listened in the darkness. He thought he had heard a faint human groan.

For several whole minutes he listened carefully, hearing only the beating of his own heart, his own rapid breathing, and the whooshing sound of the blood in his ears. At times he stopped breathing in order to hear better, but he still heard nothing.

And yet, he felt something. A presence. The space, however large its extent, did not feel unoccupied. It felt unsettlingly occupied.

“Hello?” he called out again, his voice quavering. “Is there anybody here?”

There was no reply.

“I must be imagining things.” he said to himself, and he began to walk forwards again.

Out of the darkness, a hideous form lurched at him, moaning. He turned the torch on it, and saw a decaying human face. It didn’t seem possible for the face to be alive, and yet it was. It began clawing at him with fingers that were scarcely more than bone and sinew.

Brendan gave an enormous shout and ran back towards the metal door. When he reached it he began clawing at the edges of it. Behind him, he could hear the thing shuffling towards him, making a hideous sound halfway between hissing and groaning.

“Holy Mary Mother of God, help me!” he shouted frantically, and somehow he managed to get his fingernails behind the door’s extended rim, and to his enormous relief he was able to pull it open. He ran though the doorway, pulling it shut behind him, and he didn’t stop running till he’d gone out through the church and was standing next to his car.

He started the car and took off down the hill, tires screeching.

In his haste to get away he took a wrong turn and somehow ended up driving through a cluster of houses, hardly even a village, that he previously hadn’t noticed. A van blocked the road in front of him and he slowed down, tapping his fingers nervously on the steering wheel, and he was relieved when the van turned off down a narrow path.

Then he noticed a shop, to which the van was apparently taking supplies.

He stopped the car and got out, hoping he could find someone associated with the shop to tell about the thing in the church cellar.

“Someone around here must speak English.” he muttered to himself. And then, “What’s a shop even doing here? There can’t be more than thirty people in the whole place.”

The shop was closed, unsurprisingly, since it was still very early, and he decided to see where the van had gone. He walked down the narrow path and soon came upon a strange sight.

Two men were unloading crates from the van and lowering them into a hole.

“What kind of insanity is this?” Brendan said to himself.

Somehow he sensed that the men might not appreciate his presence, and he walked briskly back to his car. Realising he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, he turned around and drove back the way he had come.

Soon he arrived at the spot where he’d gone the wrong way. From there, one road led off back down the hill, and another led back up to the church. He turned the car to go down the hill, then stopped.

In his youth, Brendan had been a rather accomplished amateur boxer, and it occurred to him that the bony half-human that had clawed at his face was probably no match for him, and it might even have wanted help. Its appearance had been so degraded that its existence seemed to hint at the supernatural, but it was even just about conceivable that the thing was in fact an extremely emaciated person who was being kept prisoner in the church cellar.

If he were to rescue someone from a cellar, that would surely interest the newspapers. Then perhaps he’d get a chance to talk about the fundraiser. Maybe they’d even have him on Breakfast TV.

Rolling his eyes, he reversed the car into the wrong turning and drove back up towards the church.

When he reached the church he lit a cigarette and marched straight in still smoking it.

“Apologies, Holy Mother.” he said. “Exceptional circumstances.”

He went straight down to the crypt and walked to the metal door, where he stubbed the cigarette out, straightened his back, and pushed the door open.

“It’s me again, so it is!” he shouted into the void. “I’m coming in now. If you need help, just say the word, like, and I’ll give yous a hand.”

This time he made it two hundred yards into the tunnel before the thing appeared, quite suddenly, in the light of his torch. It groaned pitifully, stumbling towards him. Half of its face seemed to be missing, and the other half grotesquely decayed.

“D-do you need help?” stuttered Brendan.

The thing groaned in reply.

“Shall I call an ambulance? I mean, I’ve got no signal here but if I go up, probably …”

The thing lashed out at his face, scoring a bloody line along his cheek and nearly taking out his eye.

“You ungrateful ejit!” he shouted, suddenly enraged, and he knocked the thing to the ground with a right hook. “That’s exactly what you deserve, so it is, to be sure!” he shouted at it.

Then he continued on his way determinedly, stepping over the thing, which was now making a gargling sound.

He had gone no more than a few further paces when a chorus of moans arrested his progress. Shining the torch around he saw more than a dozen of half-human creatures similar to the first, and a nauseating stench of decaying flesh hit him in the face like a palpable force.

“Oh, for crying out loud.” he said, and he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.

Most of the creatures were easily dispatched with a blow from his fist, and several he grabbed and threw against the walls of the crypt for variety.

After some time he thought he saw a white light in the distance, and he switched off the electric light and pocketed the phone. There could be no doubt about it. A white light was flooding out of a door-like aperture, illuminating the mist in the tunnel. As he approached it, squinting, he thought he could make out figures draped in white robes moving about in the aperture.

“Jesus?” he said to himself, the Catholic teachings of his youth suddenly reasserting themselves in his now-exhausted mind.

But as he approached he saw that none of the figures were Jesus, nor the Holy Mother; instead, he saw the alarmed face of a man in a lab coat, who, when he saw Bra

Brendan approaching, tried to hastily shut the door, but his lab coat caught in the doorframe and prevented it.

Brendan ran forwards and seized the edge of the door.

“No you don’t!” he shouted, and he yanked the door open and ran inside.

“You shouldn’t be here.” said a nervous man, in English.

Another man, also rather scientific-looking, was gawping at him with an open mouth, almost hiding behind the first.

“What is this place?” said Brendan.

“Come with me.” said the first man. “You can’t be in this area.”

The man guided him, dazed, through vast corridors of seemingly frenetic activity. The place resembled some kind of military installation; perhaps a submarine hangar, except there was no water and no submarines.

Technical apparatus and machines stood everywhere, and at a certain point men were taking hold of crates that were being lowered from the roof on a pulley system. They passed by cages filled with laboratory animals and rooms that looked like cells, with tough riveted steel doors, until the man finally deposited Brendan in what appeared to be some kind of office.

“Wait there.” he said. “I’ll fetch someone to explain.”

Brendan looked around at the pictures on the walls. In amongst photographs of labs and scientists was a picture of a creature in a cage that looked strikingly like the things that had attacked him.

“I should probably leave.” he said to himself, and he tried the door but found it locked. He began to throw himself against the door, trying to break it open, and finally succeeded, only to find himself grabbed by two men in face masks and combat gear, carrying guns.

“What the feck is going on here?” he shouted. In reply they hit him in the small of the back with what felt like a truncheon and dragged him away.

He was taken to a bare room with grimy stained white walls, and strapped into a chair. While he was shouting and cursing at the masked men, another man appeared, wearing a white coat and spectacles.

“You can leave us.” he said to the masked men, and they saluted and left through the door, shutting it behind them.

“I’m going to give you a little injection.” said the man, in English.

He took a small green vial from his lab coat pocket and used it to fill a syringe.

“Who are you?” shouted Brendan.

“I am Dr. Alberto Mori.” said the man, rolling up Brendan’s sleeve.

“Stop that right now.” said Brendan. “I have rights. I don’t want any injections.”

The man smiled and plunged the needle into Brendan’s arm.

“In here, you have no rights.” he said.

Then, from an inside pocket, he produce a pocket knife, which he locked open.

“I’m going to stab you with this.” he said.

“What?” said Brendan, and the man plunged the knife into his stomach.

“Why?” gasped Brendan.

“Don’t worry.” said Dr. Mori. “You won’t die. You see, eight hundred years ago, a man known as Spizo of Padova discovered a most remarkable substance here. He used a mineral found in the hills to produce a substance with incredible healing properties. Some call it the Philospher’s Stone, which is of course a silly exaggeration.

It cannot transmute lead into gold, but it can literally revive the dead. The substance was kept a closely-guarded secret until just a few decades ago, when it happened to come to the attention of certain factions in the Italian governmental apparatus.

We have been studying it ever since. It’s quite clear to us that it’s too powerful for ordinary people to possess. Even in cases where healing is impossible, it is somehow able to restore a semblance of life to the dead.”

“Like those creatures outside in the church crypt?” said Brendan, gasping for air as blood gushed out of the wound in his stomach.

“Precisely.” said Dr. Mori. “We spray the substance into the air to keep them alive.”

He smiled grimly.

“Well, half-alive. As for you, you will remain here. But you are in good company. None of us are allowed to leave. Everything we need is brought to us. We sacrifice our freedom for the advancement of science. As a matter of fact, we desperately need more experimental material. My own particular interest is in the ability of Spizo’s substance to partially regenerate severely damaged brains. Once we have made certain that the substance can heal your ordinary wounds, we will progress to examining its effects on damage to your nervous system.”

Brendan’s vision was blurring, and he felt his heart twitching erratically. He watched dazedly as Dr. Mori turned and left. At some point after that—he was too groggy to be able to determine quite when—he passed out.

Brendan awoke some time later to find a man slapping his face.

“Wake up!” said the man.

Brendan awoke with a gasp. The pain in his stomach had gone. He felt, actually, quite good.

“We have to get out of here.” said the man.

“Who are you?” said Brendan.

“My name is Marco. Dr. Marco Rossi. I haven’t time to explain everything, but they’re keeping me a prisoner here. We are all prisoners. I never agreed to this. We have to get out. You have to help me. You’re a fighter, yes? Good with your fists. Together, we can escape.”

Marco was a thin, short man with a pronounced nervous air. He unfastened the straps that held Brendan’s wrists to the chair, and Brendan stood up and looked down at himself. His thighs were entirely covered in his own blood.

“Don’t worry about that.” said Marco. “The substance temporarily alters cell metabolism in ways we don’t even understand, but a bit of blood loss won’t bother you.”

“Do you have a plan?” said Brendan, rubbing his wrists.

“They deliver supplies via a pulley.” said Marco. “One cable goes up while they other goes down. I’ve built devices that will enable us to grip the ascending cable.”

He rummaged about in his lab coat and produced a device with a handle, a wrist straps and a kind of clamp.

“It’ll be dangerous but it’s our best hope. They guard the doors to the crypt closely but they don’t pay so much attention to the pulley.”

“Let’s go then.” said Brendan, walking to the door.

“Wait!” said Marco. “I brought you some clothes. You need to look like one of us. They bring in new people all the time, from all over the world. They won’t look at you twice in this.”

He held up a lab coat, loose brown-green trousers, a greenish top and a pair of spectacles.

“I replaced the lenses with perspex.” he said. “I had to judge your size by sight but none of our clothes fit well anyway.”

“Listen, I need to get hold of a vial of this substance of yours before I go.” said Brendan as he pulled on the trousers. “My daughter’s ill. That’s why I came here.”

“No problem with that.” said Marco, and he handed Brendan three vials.

“You star!” said Brendan. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Thank me by helping me get out of here.” said Marco. “Hopefully they won’t try to stop us. I’ve engineered a distraction, but if there’s any punching to be done, I need you to do it.”

Brendan cracked his knuckles.

“No problem with that.” he said.

They walked briskly out through the door. Then they encountered a piece of extremely bad luck. Walking directly towards them was none other than Dr. Mori himself.

They tried to walk past him, but at the last moment he said, “Just a minute.” and turned Brendan around by yanking his arm.

Brendan landed a fist on Mori’s chin, and Mori fell to the floor with a gasp.

“It’s, how do you say, kicking off.” said Marco, and he pulled a small remote control out of his pocket and pressed a button on it. A loud explosion rang out, followed by a series of smaller explosions.

“That should keep them busy.” he said. “Quickly.”

They hurried towards the loading area, where the pulley brought crates of supplies down from vans parked at the back of the village supermarket.

They were almost there when two masked men dressed in black shouted, “Stop!” and levelled guns at them.

Brendan ran at the men and began wrestling with one of them, swinging the man’s body into the other man’s line of fire. The first man managed to temporarily push Brendan away, and the other fired at him. Brendan fell to the floor.

Dr. Rossi yanked the gun in the man’s hand and the gun discharged again, this time at the other man, who also dropped to the floor. Then he began trying to pull the gun away from the man.

With his dying breaths, hands shaking like a leaf, Brendan broke open one of the vials Dr. Rossi had given to him and drank the contents of it, hoping it would be effective without being injected.

When he came to his senses, the bullet wound in his chest had healed and Dr. Rossi was begging for his life as the masked man threatened him with his gun. Brendan stood up silently behind him and, looking around, spotted the gun still in the hand of the fallen man. No sooner had he taken it than the masked man followed Dr. Rossi’s gaze, even though Marco was trying not to look at Brendan, and wheeled around. Brendan promptly fired the gun.

“Your stuff really works.” said Brendan. “The substance, I mean.”

“You took it!” said Marco.

“I certainly did. Fixed me right up.”

“We must hurry.” said Marco.

They ran towards the loading area and soon saw the wire that ran to the ceiling.

“It’s not running.” said Brendan.

“Don’t worry.” said Marco. “There’s a switch that activates it.”

Suddenly a groan attracted their attention and they turned to see an entire horde of the half-human half-alive creatures stumbling towards them.

“The explosions must have disrupted the cell system.” said Marco, turning pale.

“I’ll deal with them.” said Brendan, and he turned the gun, which he was still carrying, towards them.

Marco laid a restraining hand on his arm.

“Bullets barely affect them.” he said. “They’ve inhaled too much of the substance.”

Brendan sighed.

“Never mind.” he said, and he ran at them and began knocking them to the ground.

Soon he stood proudly among a sea of fallen bodies.

“They go down pretty easy.” he said.

“They’ll get up again.” said Marco. “Let’s get out of here.”

Brendan turned, and at that moment another of the creatures flung itself at him, sinking its teeth into his neck. He sunk to the ground with a cry of pain.

Marco hurried to him and, dodging the creatures’ clawing hands which it swung at him like a cat, grabbed the gun and fired at it until its head had almost completely disintegrated, at which point it too fell to the ground. He rummaged about in Brendan’s pocket and found the second vial of the substance, which he promptly loaded into a syringe and injected into him.

Brendan sat up.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“One of the things nearly killed you but I gave you an injection.” said Marco. “You’re lucky you still had a pulse, otherwise there’d be no blood flow to carry the substance around to where it’s needed. Come, we’re leaving.”

They ran towards the pulley and, on arriving, Marco pressed a button and started it up.

“Put your wrists through the wrist straps.” he said, handing two of his devices to Brendan. “They tighten automatically.”

Soon they were being dragged upwards by the cable, Marco’s devices holding their wrists.

“How do we get out at the top?” said Brendan. “Surely we’re going to get minced, aren’t we?”

“Nobody’s getting minced.” shouted Marco, above him. “The devices will detach automatically.”

Around them, complete chaos was unfolding. The semi-human creatures were attacking the guards and the scientists, and the entire area was gradually filling with smoke.

Suddenly one of the masked guarded spotted them. He pointed upwards, and another guard shot at Dr. Mori, who screamed in pain and then hung limply as the device pulled him upwards.

The two guards were promptly attacked by a small crowd of the creatures and fell screaming as the semi-humans bit into their necks, faces and arms.

As Dr. Mori’s body reached the top, it detached, and fell past Brendan all the way to the bottom, where it lay unmoving.

Brendan felt the remaining vial, still in his pocket and looked sadly at Marco’s corpse.

“I’m sorry, my friend.” he said. “I need it for my daughter. I’m so sorry.”

At the top he found himself pulled up through an opening, where three astonished delivery drivers gawped open-mouthed at him.

One of them shouted “Santo cielo!”, which he guessed meant something probably to the effect of, “What’s going on?”

“Best go home, lads.” said Brendan, clambering out of the hole. “It’s all gone wrong down there. Horrors beyond human comprehension and what-not. The whole works.”

Brendan walked shakily back to his car.

When he arrived home, his wife ran to him as soon as he entered the door. He grasped her arms.

“I’ve got a cure for Aoife!” he said.

“You’re too late, Brendan.” wailed his wife. “She’d dead!”

“Where is she?” said Brendan.

“She’s at the undertaker’s, Brendan, where do you think she is?”

“I’ll be back soon.” said Brendan, and he ran out, leaving his astonished wife staring after him and shouting, got back in his car, and drove to the undertaker’s, failing to respect all speed limits.

The undertaker let him in to see his daughter, who was laid out on a table. They were preparing her for burial.

“Would you like a moment alone with her?” asked the undertaker, a sombre man in a black suit.

“Aye, I would that.” said Brendan, and the man dutifully made himself scarce.

Brendan pulled the vial out of his pocket, opened Aoife’s mouth, and crunched the glass vial between his forefinger and thumb.

“Please.” he said. “Please come back to us.”

Her face seemed to turn red, and then a healthy pink, and she sat up.

“Where am I?” she said. Then she felt her side. “The pain’s gone.” she added.

Brendan flung his arms around her.

“You’re all fixed up now, my darling, don’t you worry.” he said.

The undertaker, hearing the commotion, came in to see what’s happening. When he saw Aoife sitting up and smiling, he said, “Dear God! It’s not possible.”

“Mistakes are made.” said Brendan. “It happens. Don’t worry about it. I know the doctor who would have certified her death. I’ll have a word with him.”

“My death?” said Aoife. “What’s going on? Where am I?”

“Let’s go home and I’ll explain.” said Brendan.

Soon they were entering the door of their home, and Niamh appeared. When she saw Aoife, she froze, a terrified expression on her face. Then the terror turned to joy, and she ran to Aoife and hugged her in a tight embrace.

“Thank you, Holy Mother!” she exclaimed, tears of joy running down her face. “I knew you were listening!”

“I didn’t kill him, Renfield.”

“Left him to die or whatever. He deserved it. After what he did to them kids. Sick b*****d. What are you going to do now, Inspector?”

Benson opened the door to his car with one hand, balancing the box on his arm.

“Smoke cigars and read the complete works of Shakespeare.” he said.

Benson did in fact attempt to read the complete works of Shakespeare, but soon tired of it. At times he stood quietly at the window of his living room, which overlooked a field containing a solitary horse.

“I miss you, Julie.” he said, thinking of how his wife, who had died of cancer six years earlier, used to feed apples to the horse.

Eventually he decided to try to carry on doing the only thing he knew how to do, and he bought a newspaper with a view to taking out an advertisement in the back of it. There were no ads in the back of the newspaper.

“Bloody computers.” he said, throwing the newspaper onto the floor in disgust. He lit a cigar and contemplated the matter quietly, then, once he’d calmed down a bit he fetched an old laptop from his home office and began to research how to advertise on the internet.

Benson wasn’t a fan of the internet, but he used it when needed, and soon he’d successfully placed an ad offering his services as a private detective.

“Please!” said the young woman, “Let me go!”

“I’m so sorry.” said the elderly man who was keeping her captive. “I’m so very sorry, my love. Everything will be fine. I just need to do a few more experiments.”

“Let me out of here!” she yelled at him.

The man was wearing a bloodstained lab coat and resembled a scientist of some sort. After he shut the door to the bedroom, where she was chained by one hand to a heavy old iron bed, she heard him making noises that sounded halfway between sobbing and howling.

She knew he was preparing to perform another of his experiments on her. After the last one, her mind was fuzzy, and she was unable to even remember how she had fallen into the clutches of this deranged madman.

Her mind was going. Another experiment and who knows what would be left of her. She screamed in frustration, yanking at the handcuff that held her to the bed. She was much too scared to eat the food he had left her. Her stomach was in knots.

Again she tried to pull her hand out of the handcuff, but succeeded only in causing herself a great deal of pain.

Through the window she could see a field filled with cows. Everything was normal out there. Safety was so near, and yet so far. If only she could get the cuff off.

She tried again to squeeze her hand through it, but in the end collapsed back onto the hospital bed, sobbing and shaking.

“It’s an unusual case.” said Benson.

The woman sitting in his living room was clearly very sincere. Nothing about her set off alarm bells for Benson. Whether her story was true or not was another matter, but she clearly believed it. Neither did he have the sense that she was purposefully leaving out anything of significance.

He knew one or two of the people over at Stetley Police Station. He would certainly have a word with them and see if any of them could remember the woman.

“As far as you’re aware, you were 18 or 19 when you walked into the station?” said Benson.

“That’s only what they told me after they got a specialist to examine me.” said Daisy. “I had no idea how old I was.”

“That would make you 29 or 30 years old now.”

“29, according to my passport. But it’s all just a guess.”

“What about ancestry websites? You can submit a drop of blood or a swab from inside your cheek—I’m not sure exactly how it works—and they try to trace your ancestors.”

“I’ve tried all of them. They turn up distant relatives, but so distant that I’d hardly consider them relatives at all.”

“I see.” said Benson. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

She did mind, but she said “no” anyway. Benson proceeded to light a cigar that smelt to Daisy like burning horse dung.

“Stetley, eleven years ago.” said Benson thoughtfully.

“Do you think you can help me?” said Daisy.

“Possibly.”

“How much will it cost?”

He had already carefully assessed her likely personal wealth from her clothing, mannerisms, general appearance, and the car she drove. She wasn’t rich, but she was doing OK.

“Two thousand.” he said. “If I succeed. Otherwise, nothing.”

“I’ll pay it.” she said. “Gladly. I just want to know who I am.”

She could hear his footsteps ascending the stairs outside the door. Again she tried desperately to pull her hand out of the cuff, but she couldn’t manage it.

The door opened.

Again he stood there in the bloodstained lab coat. He looked to be on the verge of death; his face was horribly pale, almost yellow, and he seemed unsteady on his feet. With a gasp of horror, she saw that he was holding a hypodermic syringe.

“You haven’t eaten any of your food.” he said.

“Please …” she said, tears in her bloodshot eyes, “… let me go. I won’t tell anyone anything, I promise. I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

“If only you understood.” he said. “I haven’t any choice now. No more than you have. I can still fix everything. I really think I can. If you come peacefully I won’t even need to inject you.”

“Get away from me you freak!”

The man staggered towards her, swaying slightly.

He began to try to stick the needle in her, while she hit and kicked at him, desperately trying to fend him off.

“Please stop this.” said the man, almost crying. “Can’t you see I’m unwell? You must let me repeat the procedure!”

“Get off me!” she shouted, but he managed to plunge the needle into her ankle and depress the plunger halfway by the time she was able to land a kick in his face, sending him reeling backwards.

“I’ll kill you, you sick weirdo!” she screamed at him.

She hoped he would stay where he’d fallen on the floor and for some minutes it seemed as though that might be the case, but gradually he managed to crawl to a set of cupboards at the side of the room, which he then used to pull himself upright.

Meanwhile, she could feel the substance he had injected her with taking effect. She was having trouble focusing, and she was losing control of her limbs.

Again he began to stumble towards her with the syringe.

“Just another few mils.” he said. “Almost done. There’s no need to worry.”

She began to cry unrestrainedly.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed. “Let me go!”

“I’m sorry.” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

And with that, he injected her arm, and she blacked out.

Benson started by talking to some of his more senior former colleagues at Stetley.

“I remember her very well.” said Sergeant Wilson. “Poor lass. She was absolutely terrified. Ran into the station one evening. She was scared stiff of something, but she couldn’t remember what.”

“What did she remember?” asked Benson.

“Practically nothing. Couldn’t even remember her own name. The psych people had a look at her and as far as I know she was found to be sane, but suffering profound amnesia. They reckoned she was an adult. I think they put her in social housing. So you’re saying she’s now paying you to find out who she is?”

“That’s the situation.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Thank you, Charlie.” said Benson.

As Benson was leaving, Wilson said, “Hey, what about a hypnotist?”

“You what?”

“A hypnotist. We had a witness to a case who tried one once. Completely useless in the end, but maybe it’s worth a try.”

“Completely useless, you say?”

“He was trying to remember a car reg. but it didn’t help. Still, you never know.”

“Do you know his name?”

“The hypnotist? No but he’s got a practice out Morley way. Pretty easy to find. I drive past it every day. Always wonder what he’s up to.”

“It’s just pseudoscience though, isn’t it?” said Benson.

“No, not completely. There’s something to it. Like I say, long shot but it might be worth a try.”

Benson soon located Wilson’s hypnotist. The man ran a hypnotherapy practice out of a shabby-looking building on the main road leading from Morley to Stetley. Inside, a bored-looking receptionist sat painting her nails. When Benson entered she smiled brightly and asked what she could do for him.

“A client of mine needs some help recalling old memories.” said Benson.

“Oh!” said the woman. “Unusual. And you are?”

“The name’s Benson. I’m a private detective.”

“Really?” said the woman, with exaggerated interest.

“Do you think the hypnotherapist could help?”

“You can ask him if you want. He’s in the back. Go straight through.”

“He’s not with a client?”

“Bit of a quiet day.” said the woman, winking.

Benson opened a plain white door and emerged into a short dimly-lit corridor. At the end of the corridor was a thick bead curtain, which he pushed through, saying “Hello?”

At a small round table was a thickset man with longish lanky hair playing cards with himself.

“Welcome, welcome, my friend.” he said, without even looking up. He had a strong accent, which Benson judged to be Eastern European. “What can I do for you?”

“My name’s Benson. I’m a private detective, as I was just explaining to your receptionist. A client of mine has no memory of her life before the age of 18. She’d like help with recalling her memories. Do you do that sort of thing?”

Finally the man looked up, with gleaming eyes.

“Ahh!” he exclaimed. “You want me to … ahh … hypnotise her?”

“You’re a hypnotist, aren’t you?”

“I most certainly am.” said the man, rising to his feet. “I am Dr. Horvath János. You may call me Matsy. Forgive me, my friend. In my country we have saying, ‘the fence is not made of sausages’. You know what this means?”

“No?”

“It means, if you have a fence, you do not make it from sausage meat!”

Dr. Horvath exploded into peels of crazed laughter.

“Sorry, it’s just a little joke.”

He grasped Benson’s hand, pumping it firmly.

Benson’s face had developed a puzzled expression, as he inwardly tried to determine whether this man was sane enough to be useful, but he privately concluded that Horvath was probably par de course for a hypnotist, and his expression abruptly cleared.

“I’ll bring her in then.” he said.

“Good.” said Horvath, suddenly seriousness. “Please, make appointment with reception lady.”

He gestured towards the door that led to the receptionist with an expansive flowing gesture.

Benson turned around on the spot and headed back out through the bead curtain.

“Thanks for your time.” he said over his shoulder.

After he’d arranged the appointment and had stepped back outside into the cool summer air, he muttered, “Bunch of weirdos.” to himself and straightened his tie before proceeding on his way.

Three days later, Benson returned to the hypnotherapy practice with Daisy. They sat in the front reception area on plastic chairs, while the receptionist stared at them as she filed her nails.

“Has the doctor helped a lot of people?” asked Daisy nervously.

“Oh, yes!” said the receptionist. “He’s helped me enormously.”

She rolled her eyes back in her head as if to express overwhelming emotion.

“Really?” said Daisy. “In what way?”

“In every way.” said the receptionist, winking.

She continued staring at them expectantly and filing her nails for another five minutes, Benson and Daisy uncomfortably attempting to make conversation, with only the most peculiar results. Then the receptionist suddenly said, without any apparent external signal, “He’s ready for you now.”

“Will you come in with me?” Daisy said nervously to Benson.

“Of course.” Benson replied.

“Ahhh!” said Horvath, when they emerged from the bead curtain. “Please, sit down. I am to hypnotise both of you?”

“No, just Miss Smith.” said Benson.

“I can do it if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary.” said Benson.

Soon, Daisy was sitting at the table opposite Horvath, while Benson sat at the side in an armchair, observing quietly.

“Is your degree in hynoptherapy?” Daisy asked.

“Oh, no!” said Horvath. “It is in nuclear engineering. But I cannot obtain work in my country after the accident.”

“Accident?” said Daisy.

“It was not my fault. Don’t worry about it.”

Horvath took hold of Daisy’s hands.

“Look deeply into my eyes!” he said.

She peered anxiously into Horvath’s eyes, which were surmounted by a pair of enormously shaggy brown eyebrows.

“Do not look away!” said Horvath. “Do not speak until I tell you to speak. The horse has four legs and still stumbles! Do not react. Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock! There is only the present moment!”

And then, somehow, half an hour seemed to disappear. The next thing Daisy could remember was Benson rising to his feet and saying, “I’ll confess my expectations weren’t high, Dr. Horvath, but you’ve been most helpful.”

“It is my pleasure.” said Horvath. “Now I will take your hard-earned money!”

And he lapsed into a peel of loud laughter.

Dr. Horvath and his receptionist watched as Benson and Daisy left and got into Benson’s car.

“Another success, Dr. Horvath.” said the receptionist.

“Yes, fantastic work, Dr. Armitage.” said Horvath. “Did you stare at them unsettlingly as I requested?”

“I did.” said Armitage. “It appears your theories are absolutely correct.”

“The more they are unsettled, the more amenable they are to hypnotic suggestion.” said Horvath, smiling quietly in satisfaction. “Poor girl. I only hope she finds what she’s looking for.”

He watched as the car drove off, Dr. Armitage flipping through a medical journal to find one of the articles they had written together.

“I think we should make the storefront even more shabby.” said Horvath thoughtfully.

In Benson’s car, Daisy seemed half in a fugue, but the trance was gradually lifting and she was beginning to talk enthusiastically about her new memories.

“I remember a farmhouse.” she said. “I’m sure that’s where I was, before I found the police station. I think …” She frowned, a shiver running down her spine. “… I think I was being held there. I mean, as a prisoner. I think I escaped.”

“What do you remember about this farmhouse?”

She stared out of the car window, frowning. For some moments she was silent, then she said, “It was an old stone building. But I think it was painted white. There was something … some kind of strange thing nearby. A windmill! Maybe it was an old windmill.”

“What was the land like around this farmhouse?” asked Benson. “Hilly? Flat?”

“A bit hilly.”

“I wonder if you could be thinking of the windmill up near Spelford.” said Benson.

“There’s a windmill there?”

“There certainly is. About forty minutes from here. How are you doing for time?”

“Let’s go.” said Daisy.

They drove out of the town along winding country roads. The sky gradually turned grey, dark clouds obscuring the sun. As they approached the old windmill, Daisy became mesmerised by the surroundings.

“Do you recognise anything?” said Benson.

“It seems … familiar.” said Daisy.

Benson pulled up outside the windmill and Daisy stared at it curiously.

“I don’t know.” she said.

“We can explore a bit.”

“Is there a turning on the right later on?”

“I think so, if memory serves.” said Benson.

“Let’s go down there.”

Benson drove slowly further along the lane and turned right, Daisy looking around with a slightly wild expression in her eyes.

Soon the hedges at the side of the road disappeared, and in the distance was a cottage with white stone walls.

“Stop!” said Daisy. “That’s it! That’s where I escaped from!”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

When the young woman awoke, her hands were tied to either side of another narrow hospital bed with leather straps, and above her was poised an enormous machine.

“What’s going on?” she said groggily.

“I would have kept you sedated but the brain needs to be awake to tackle this properly.” said the old man.

She turned her head and, seeing his bloodstained lab coat, remembered where she was. She tried to scream, but due to the effects of the drug still in her bloodstream, the scream came out as a kind of frantic hissing.

The old man was flipping switches and turning dials, stumbling to and fro to check computer screens arranged at the side of the room.

“We’re almost ready.” he announced. “I’m sure I can get it right this time.”

“Please …” she said weakly. “I’m begging you …”

“It won’t hurt.” said the man. “A few moments of confusion, that’s all. I only wish I could explain properly but you’ll have to trust me.”

She yanked furiously, but weakly, at the straps that held her to the bed.

The enormous machine above her was slowly descending towards her head.

“They’ll catch you.” said the young woman, slurring her words. “You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison.”

“Don’t worry, my dear.” said the man. “Try to relax. Everything will be so much easier if you relax.”

The old man was swaying from side to side and wheezing.

“What are you doing with me? Why are you doing this?”

“We’re all ready now.” said the man. “I’ll start up the probe. Soon be over.”

Benson knocked firmly on the door, Daisy remaining behind in the car on his recommendation. A stressed-looking woman answered. Behind her were two boisterous children, demanding to know who was at the door.

“Be quiet a minute!” she shouted at the children. To Benson she said, “Sorry. They’re a handful.”

“Quite all right, ma’am.” said Benson. “Apologies for disturbing you. The name’s Benson. I’m a private detective.”

“I thought you were police.” said the woman.

“Used to be.” said Benson, a slight smile inadvertently appearing on his lips. “I’m trying trace someone who might have lived here. You don’t fit my profile, ma’am, but I wonder if you’d know anything about the previous inhabitants?”

“We’ve been here for over eight years.” she said. “Before that an elderly couple lived here. Don’t know much about them but they say the old man was a scientist. They disappeared, you know. Never seen again. Perhaps they ran off somewhere together.”

“They both disappeared?” said Benson.

“Yes, both at the same time. But that was long before we moved in.”

“Would you happen to know their names?”

“I’ve got an old newspaper article somewhere.” she replied. “I’ll look it out for you. Hang on a minute.”

Soon Benson was back in the car, and he and Daisy were examining the newspaper article.

“Ronald Aspen.” said Benson. “Physicist. Helen Aspen, artist.”

“They look … familiar somehow.” said Daisy, peering at the photograph of the old couple.

“How about the name? Does the name Aspen ring any bells?”

“Everything seems familiar. The house, the name, their faces … perhaps I’m imagining it. I’m not sure.”

“Look at the date of his disappearance.” said Benson, pointing at some text in the article.

“The day after I turned up at the police station.” said Daisy in surprise. “What does it all mean?”

“I don’t know.” said Benson. “I can certainly think of possibilities, but at the moment there’s no way to know if any of them are correct.”

“Such as?”

“What if you were in some kind of an accident with them? They were killed and never found, but you only lost your memory.”

He watched Daisy carefully, gauging her reaction.

“The doctors examined me thoroughly. They found no sign of trauma to my head. Nothing like that.”

“Well, it’s just an idea.” said Benson. “Still, it’s possible, given the coincidence of the dates, that you either knew them—perhaps they’re even relatives—or …”

“Or what?” said Daisy.

“Well, best not to speculate.” said Benson. “What I need to do now is, I need to track down people who knew the Aspens. Find out a bit more about them. Leave it to me.”

It didn’t take long for Benson to locate a relative of the Aspens. In fact, he found their son, who was almost sixty years old. Gerald Aspen lived in a modest rather ancient house in a nearby village and taught mathematics at the the university in town. His beard was almost white and he wore round spectacles and smiled with unusual warmth for a mathematician.

Gerald’s wife, Masha, was Russian; tall and angular, with black hair, and somewhat younger than Gerald. She plied Benson with Russian pastries and coffee while he talked to Gerald in the couple’s living room.

“It was a shock when my parents disappeared.” said Gerald. “We’ve never stopped searching for them but, unfortunately, my research on non-Euclidean topologies has been rather more successful than my efforts to find my parents.”

Benson’s gazed flicked between the photographs of the Aspens that he’d managed to assemble over the past few days, and Gerald’s face. There was a definite resemblance, but something bothered him about their appearance. He needed some silence to think about it. He made a mental to consider the matter later on.

“You’ve never managed to unearth any clues as to what might have happened to them?”

“Too many clues, in a way.” said Gerald. “If you want to know what I think, I think my parents accidentally disassembled themselves.”

“Come again?” said Benson.

“I know it sounds mad.” said Gerald. “My parents left a house filled with my father’s scientific equipment and journals.”

Masha Aspen sat down on the sofa next to Gerald.

“Gerald’s father was a genius.” she said. “Like Gerald.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.” said Gerald modestly, smiling. “My father was working on technology that manipulated matter at the subatomic level. Organic matter particularly interested him. Imagine what you could do if you could seamlessly rearrange organic matter, the very stuff we’re made of. You could cure almost any illness.” Gerald looked down at the floor, his expression suddenly darkening slightly. “And you see, my mother was desperately ill. She had cancer of the brain. The doctors said she had another three months at the most.”

“You think they committed suicide?” Benson asked.

“No.” said Gerald, looking up with a brief smile. “I think it’s possible that he accidentally created some kind of field that rearranged the matter of their bodies into some concentrated form. Perhaps he pushed his experiments too far. I think he courted danger. His beloved wife, my mother, was dying, and he himself was suffering serious heart disease. He probably felt he had little to lose. Probably one of his experiments went horribly wrong, and, well, they turned themselves into air, or pure carbon.”

“We found blocks of carbon in the house.” said Masha. “Large blocks of black carbon, with a very unusual atomic structure. As if …”

Suddenly something clicked in Benson’s brain, and he realised what was bothering him. There was a definite family resemblance between Gerald and Daisy. Once he’d noticed it, he could not unsee it. These two, he was sure, were members of the same family.

“Would you consider agreeing to a DNA test?” said Benson.

Gerald’s face registered mild surprise.

“If you think it’ll help.” he said. “May I ask why?”

“I’d like to check a theory I have.” said Benson. “At the moment I can’t be more specific, but if my theory proves correct, I’ll be sure to let you know right away.”

The machine poised above the young woman began to make a loud whirring sound. The woman felt her mental processes blur, as though she had been given another shot of sedative. The old man said, “I need to reduce the cross-field slighty.” and he turned towards a panel of controls, but at that moment he grasped his chest and fell to the floor, wheezing horribly.

Seeing her chance, the woman began biting at the straps that held her wrists to the side of the bed. The man looked up, deathly pale, and gestured towards her as though imploring her to stop, but then he collapsed into a heap on the floor, face down.

The room seemed to whirl around her, but she concentrated on the strap holding her right wrist. It seemed to grow until it filled her entire remaining field of vision.

She managed to pull out one of the straps and, pulling on it with her teeth, loosened it from her wrist. Then she frantically undid the other strap and staggered away from the bed holding on to anything she could find to support her.

She stumbled up a flight of steps, emerging into a somewhat rustic kitchen, and from there she pushed open a thick wooden door.

She found herself facing a rolling vista of green fields and hills. In the distance, part of some strange structure was visible; perhaps the side of an old windmill. She lurched forward into a carefully-tended garden, filled with flowers and, after twice falling to the ground and picking herself up again, she opened a garden gate and half-fell through it.

When her mind eventually began to clear slightly, she was walking along a quiet country lane, and she realised with a start that she had no idea where she was or what she was doing there. She couldn’t even remember her own name.

Almost panicking, she quickened her pace, sometimes running, until, an hour later, she arrived in a small village. There she saw a woman pushing twins in a pushchair. She ran to the woman crying, “Please help me! I don’t know who I am!”

Benson stared uncomprehendingly at the results from the lab. After ordering the initial DNA tests he’d ordered more, then he’d turned to experts to explain the results, then different experts in case the first lot were mistaken, and they always came back with the same reply.

Obviously, it was impossible.

He tried sleeping on the problem, but when he awoke it was just as puzzling as before.

It was a week before he managed to think up a possible solution. It was a solution so outrageous, so ridiculous, that he struggled to take it seriously. But after all, hadn’t Sherlock Holmes said that when one eliminates the impossible, whatever’s left must be fact? And he should know.

“That’s a fictional character, you idiot.” Benson said to himself, out loud.

He decided to proceed as if the DNA results, however incredible, were actually correct, and not some curious mistake. In that case, there was probably another of them wandering about out there somewhere. Perhaps initially he had taken fright and had deliberately hidden himself from the authorities, but sooner or later he too would have become curious about his own identity and then he would likely have had recourse to ancestry services.

With Gerald’s permission, he sent off Gerald’s DNA to an online service and waited for the results.

Two weeks later, he logged onto the website, sitting next to Gerald in his living room, Masha sitting on Gerald’s other side.

“That’s him.” said Benson.

“That’s clearly not my father.” said Gerald.

“It is my contention that perhaps that actually is your father.” said Benson.

“He must be using some else’s photograph then.” said Gerald.

Benson rubbed the side of his cheek with his hand thoughtfully.

“How much do you actually know about your father’s work?” he asked.

“Not much more than I’ve already told you.” said Gerald. “I have some of his old journals from the house if that’s any use.”

“I suggest we peruse them carefully.” said Benson.

“Are you going to contact this man?” said Masha.

“That’s my plan.” said Benson.

“And what then?” said Gerald.

“It might be rather interesting to get him together with Daisy.”

“Rather interesting.” echoed Gerald. “That’s the understatement of the year.”

“Can we meet him too?” said Masha.

“Of course you can.” said Benson. “If he agrees. I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to.”

Ronald Aspen gazed out of the window at the herd of cows in the adjoining field with tears in his eyes.

“It’s not ready, yet, Helen.” he said. “I’ve done everything I can. I’ve done everything.”

Helen laid a hand on the old man’s arm, reaching up from the wheelchair where she sat.

A tube under her nose, connected to a gas cylinder, kept her supplied with extra oxygen.

“I haven’t got much longer, Ron.” she said. “I could have another attack at any moment, and that’ll be the end of me.”

“Perhaps it’s wrong, what I’m trying to do.” said Ronald. “What do we really know about death? We don’t know where consciousness comes from. How can we know where it goes? What if we’re like a baby that doesn’t want to be born?”

“What if we die and that’s the end of us forever?” said Helen. “I want you to try, Ron. I’ve nothing to lose now.”

Ronald Aspen sighed heavily.

“I’ll try it on myself first.” he said.

“No.” said Helen firmly. “If you … if it goes wrong, then you won’t be able to help either of us. Try it on me. Do the best you can.”

“It could destroy your brain, or leave you with profound amnesia.” said Ronald desperately.

“Losing my memories is better than losing my life.” said Helen. “We can make new memories, Ron. If I’m gone, I’m gone. It’s all over then.”

“All right.” said Ronald quietly. “We’ll do it. If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“I’m sure.”

Getting her down to the cellar proved difficult. He was too weak to carry her. He had to bump the wheelchair down one step at a time. When he reached the bottom, he cried out in pain, clutching his heart.

“Ron, are you OK? You’re bleeding!” Helen exclaimed.

Blood was pouring from his nose, covering his lab coat.

“It’s the warfarin.” he said.

He took a little bag containing tablets from the top pocket of his lab coat and took out a pill with trembling hands, placing it under his tongue.

“I’ll be OK in a minute.” he said.

“Be strong.” said Helen. “You have to be strong, for both of us.”

He held up the palm of his hand, as if to say, “I know, I know.” and stood leaning against an instrument table for some moments, catching his breath. Finally he straightened up.

“OK.” he said. “I’ll take you to the machine.”

Helen lay down underneath the enormous device and waited patiently and calmly as Ronald operated the controls to lower it closer to her body.

“I’m going to start with the most minimal changes usefully possible.” he said.

“Whatever you feel is best.” said Helen. “I trust you.”

He flicked a series of switches and carefully adjusted several dials, then he took a key from his pocket, placed it in a little lock, and turned it. A large red button underneath a plastic cover lit up, and he flipped the plastic lid and, with a final affectionate but anxious glance at Helen, pressed the button.

The next thing Ronald Aspen remembered was when he woke up on the floor, in a pool of his own blood. He staggered to his feet, then recalled what he’d been doing when he fainted, and he hit the red button and ran to Helen.

She was alive, but the process had clearly gone too far. Helen appeared scarcely more than eighteen years old.

“Helen!” he said, in a panic, rubbing her arm. “Helen, my love!”

Helen slowly opened her eyes, and screamed. She leapt off the bed and began to pick things up and hurl them at Ronald.

“Helen, it’s me!” he shouted, as a glass beaker bounced off the arm he’d raised to protect his face, and smashed, scattering broken glass everywhere.

She grabbed a jar from the the laboratory bench and raised it above her head.

“Helen, no! It’s concentrated acid!”

He only barely had time to dive out of the way before the jar of acid bounced on the floor where’d he’d been standing, mercifully remaining intact.

Helen was screaming derangedly.

“My head!” she shouted. “What’s wrong with my head?”

As he watched, she sank gradually to the floor, thrashing and sobbing in evident terrible pain.

Ronald seized his chance. He quickly filled a syringe with a sedative and staggered towards Helen, wheezing.

At the last moment she saw him and began hitting him and shouting, but he managed to get the needle into her shoulder somehow, and she spread out on the ground, semi-conscious.

“Don’t worry, Helen.” he said. “I can fix this. It’s just a problem with brain metabolism. The process went too far. I fainted. I’m so sorry.”

Once he’d got her back in the machine, he scanned her thoroughly, and carefully analysed all the changes the machine had wrought in her. There was no longer any sign of cancer. It was only that the blood supply wasn’t quite right in certain parts of her brain.

He switched on the machine and had it rearrange her brain slightly. Then, after giving her another injection, he put her back in the wheel chair and pulled it slowly and painfully up the cellar steps.

Soon she was lying in the bed the hospital had delivered for her six months ago.

“But I won’t really know how she is till she’s conscious.” he muttered to himself.

The thought of her waking up and violently thrashing around again scared him, and it was then that he remembered a pair of handcuffs he’d bought a decade ago after reading a book on Houdini, curious as to whether he could teach himself to break out of them.

He fixed one cuff to the bed rail and put the other loosely around her wrist.

It was only after Helen awoke that he discovered that, while the pain and general derangement had been successfully cured, she had no idea who he was.

He thought carefully about the matter, and decided that, while the memory loss might well be permanent, it could also be due to insufficient blood to the hippocampus. He reluctantly resolved to try one more treatment with the machine.

He had to sedate her again to get her back into the machine, but in the end, he succeeded. Unfortunately, Ronald’s own medical problems intervened. He awoke to find himself on the floor again, and Helen gone.

When he attempted to rise to his feet, his heart beat wildly and erratically, and this time the tablets didn’t help. In enormous pain and shaking like a leaf, he managed to pull himself up far enough to set the controls on the machine. He wouldn’t be able to make any fine adjustments, or even, really, coarse adjustments, but the machine was now his only hope for remaining alive.

He passed out again while setting the machine. After waking, he hit the red button, only just managing to reach up far enough to do it, then he used his last remaining strength to crawl to the treatment bed. There, he passed out, his lungs gave one last gasp, and his heart stopped.

The machine, however, knew what to do. It carefully rearranged his heart and restarted it. Bit by bit, it remoulded and remade Ronald Aspen, even working on his brain to remove the effects of ageing.

When Ronald awoke, he had no idea who or where he was, and he found himself lying underneath an enormous machine which had since turned itself off but was still poised ominously above him.

Terrified, he jumped off the bed and gazed in horror at the apparatus in the cellar. It seemed that some mad scientist must be experimenting on him. He tore off the bloodstained lab coat and bolted up the cellar steps. Then he flung open the front door of the house, and ran for his life.

Via a curious stroke of luck—whether good or bad is perhaps unclear—he happened to come upon a car that had been left temporarily unattended, with the keys in the ignition, while its owner had gone to inspect one of her horses in a nearby field.

He jumped into the car and drove off.

When he ran out of fuel six hours later, he pulled up in a lay-by and checked the car carefully for anything that might be useful to him. By then he could only vaguely remember the house he’d escaped from, although the memory of the cellar laboratory itself was still vivid, as was the fact that he had stolen a car.

He found a small quantity of cash in the glove box, and very little else.

That night he slept on a park bench, nervously watching for police.

Thus began Ronald Aspen’s new life, as a now-young homeless man, potentially wanted by the authorities for car theft.

Unpromising as his new start in life was, Ronald Aspen’s ferocious natural intelligence soon helped him to find his feet, and by the end of the year he was working as a kitchen porter, cash in hand, under an assumed identity.

Eleven years later, he had acquired a doctorate in physics—his second, although he couldn’t remember the first—and he was living in a modest house in the suburbs. He had never ceased to wonder about his previous life, only fragments of which had returned to him, but he had come to terms with the situation.

In the end, after several iterations and refinements, Benson’s theory corresponded more or less to these actual events. Incredible though the theory certainly was, it neatly explained everything, as even Daisy, her ostensible son Gerald, and his wife Masha, had to agree.

One autumn day, Benson and Daisy pulled up outside a modest house, where a strange young man—a physicist—lived alone with his dog. The gravel on the little driveway crunched under the car’s wheels as Benson brought the car to a stop.

A leaf from a tree in the garden next door blew against the windscreen, together with a few tiny drops of drizzle.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” said Benson. “You can still change your mind. If my theory is correct, he probably won’t recognise you, nor you him.”

“I need to meet him.” said Daisy firmly. “We were married for fifty years, weren’t we? Of course I need to meet him.”

“Well, you’re the client.” said Benson.

He got out of the car and, while Daisy was still steeling her nerves, went around and opened the door for her.

She glanced at him, suddenly jolted out of her reverie, and got out.

They went to the door, and Benson knocked firmly.

From inside came a shout and a yelp, as Aspen—living under the name Steven Smith—tripped over his dog. Then they listened to Aspen consoling his dog and apologising to it.

Finally, Aspen opened the door.

“Steven Smith?” said Benson.

“Yes.” said the man, faintly, staring awestruck at Daisy.

“My name’s Benson. I’m a —”

But Benson didn’t have time to finish the sentence before the pair of them flung themselves into each other’s arms.

“Helen!” said Ronald.

“Ron!” said Helen.

Another rejection.

The letter was longer than some of the others, at least, but once again they had failed to take his idea seriously.

It said:

Dear Dr. Hedgeley,

We have considered your research carefully, but it is the feeling of the directors of the Institute for Advanced Research in Warfare that, were we to link ourselves to your work, we would unfortunately take on excessive moral hazard.

We greatly appreciate the innovative nature of your research and wish you the very best of luck.

Sincerely,

J. Potridge-Smythe, S.P Prince, Aubrey Fife-Edgerton

What did it even mean? Excessive moral hazard? He tore the letter up in frustration, then sank to his knees, weeping. Not only had he sunk all of his money into the project, he had also taken on enormous debts, all with the hope of helping humanity, and this was how the world repaid him.

For ten whole minutes he sat on the floor in the hall, leaning against the wall, crying. Then he went to the bathroom, where he took a bottle of sedatives from the cabinet and swallowed three of them. The prescribed dose had long since ceased to be effective.

This enabled Dr. Hedgeley to get a grip on himself, and he calmly went down to the cellar to remind himself of the extent of his own genius.

The transgenic mice flung themselves against the perspex fronts of their boxes. The boxes were stacked on top of each other in sturdy frames, lining the sides of the room. All around him, balding, angry mice with protruding teeth flung themselves at the perspex, desperate to get at him. Many of them were covered in blood from biting themselves and each other, but all had expressions of pure rage on their little faces.

For these mice, eating was only a distraction, and they could not be persuaded to mate. They lived only to attack; to kill and to maim.

Released onto any battlefield, they would cause chaos among enemy soldiers. Many grown men would surely flee in terror from these loathsome creatures. And yet, the leaders of the world’s military institutes seemed blind to their capabilities. They treated him as if he were a low-grade fool.

Dr. Hedgeley could feel the anger and bitterness rising within him again, in spite of the tablets.

He ascended the stairs to the bathroom once more, and took another four tablets.

His behaviour wasn’t normal; he knew that. He wondered vaguely if the medication he had been taking to lower his testosterone was affecting his emotional stability. Perhaps it was interacting badly with the sedatives, he thought. He hadn’t told his doctor about the testosterone-lowering medication. It was an unfortunate secret necessity.

Gradually a strange optimism descended upon him, displacing his depressed and angry mood. Clearly, he had been taking the wrong approach. There were other ways to show the world the power of his work.

He went back down to the cellar, staggering slightly with dizziness. There he began to flip a series of switches on a panel, arranged in a grid. One by one, a grid of green lights turned red.

Finally he pulled a lever, and the little perspex doors all sprung open.

Almost instantly he was covered in a furry blanket of screeching, ravenous mice. One by one they slowly fell away, scurrying off into dark corners, gnawing at the brickwork, disappearing into holes where the cement had crumbled.

“Let’s see what you can do, my little ones.” he murmured.

He ascended the cellar steps and locked the cellar door behind him. Then he got in his car and drove to the bridge over Tenley River, throwing the key out of the window and into the river below as he did so.

Unfortunately, the act of hurling the key in his precarious state, certainly unfit for driving, caused him to swerve into the path of oncoming traffic. His car hit the side of a van and bounced spectacularly, smashing through the barriers at the edge of the bridge. Dr. Hedgeley had been driving well over the speed limit.

His car plummeted into the river below.

When they retrieved his body and performed an autopsy, they discovered sedatives in his bloodstream at a concentration that represented three times the safe dose.

Alan Tetchley pulled up outside his office in his rusty Citroen. He began to transfer the boxes of coins from the boot to his office safe. Perhaps it would have been better to take them directly to the bank, as people had frequently told him, but nothing beat the satisfaction of having a safe full of one- and two-pound coins. Besides, by arriving at the bank carrying all those little boxes, he would make himself a target of potential criminals. No, this was much safer.

Later on that week the security people would arrive and take the contents of the safe to the bank. He was happy with the arrangement.

After locking up the coins, he got back in the Citroen and drove home.

Sarah Tetchley was at home, waiting for him. They hugged, kissed, and then she asked him, smiling, “How’s it gone today? People still playing your retro arcade games, Mr. Tetchley?”

“They certainly are, Mrs. Tetchley. Over two hundred quid today. Not bad.”

“You can give me a hand with the baby room later.” she said, hanging onto his neck and laughing.

“It’d be a pleasure. Later. I’m starving.”

She abruptly let go of him and headed for the kitchen.

“I’ve been working on a new recipe. Kind of an experiment.”

He crossed himself theatrically.

“Protect me, merciful Lord.” he said.

“You ungrateful brute!” she said.

At that very moment, Pete, Dave and Rob were driving towards the Tetchley’s house in a battered old white van. As Pete drove, Dave and Rob pulled on black ski masks, then they helped Pete put his on.

It was dark by the time they stopped outside the Tetchley’s door.

“He’s got company.” said Pete.

“It’s just his wife.” said Dave. “We’ll tie her up or something.”

“Or something.” said Rob, laughing darkly, picking up a hatchet.

They smashed the door down with a steel battering ram and ran inside.

They found Alan and Sarah finishing their pasta on the sofa, glasses of wine standing on the table in front of them along with a candle for atmosphere.

“What the …?” shouted Alan, startled.

Sarah screamed.

“Get down on the floor!” shouted Dave, and they dragged the couple off the sofa and threw them roughly to the ground.

“Please!” shouted Alan. “You can take anything you want! Don’t hurt us!”

“That’s the right attitude.” said Dave.

Then Dave gestured with his head to Pete and Rob.

“Get her out of here.” he said. “I don’t want any distractions.”

The two men yanked Sarah to her feet and led her out of the living room.

“Please don’t hurt her!” shouted Alan.

“Shut it.” said Dave.

“What we supposed to do with her?” said Pete, as they dragged the terrified Sarah through the hallway.

“Stash her in the bathroom?” said Rob.

“Hey, hang on.” said Pete. “Let’s stick her in here.”

They were passing the door to the cellar, which had remained locked since Alan and Sarah had purchased the house, since they had been unable to find the key and other priorities had taken precedence.

“It’s locked.” said Rob, trying the door.

Pete tried to break the door in with his shoulder, while Rob restrained Sarah, but he was a tall, thin man, and lacked sufficient weight and strength to manage the task, even though the cellar door was relatively flimsy.

“Take her for a second.” said Rob, and Pete twisted Sarah’s arms behind her back.

“Why are you doing this?” sobbed Sarah.

“Silence!” said Rob, and he gave the cellar door an enormous kick. It broke open, slamming noisily against the wall, revealing a flight of steps.

“Give me the cable ties.” said Rob to Pete, taking hold of Sarah, and Pete fished around in his pocket and produce a handful of zip ties.

They used the ties to secure Sarah’s wrists and ankles, then they dragged her to the stop of the cellar steps.

“Try not to die.” said Rob.

Sarah screamed as they threw her down the steps.

Meanwhile, Dave had been working on Alan. Via a combination of threats and physical torture, he had extracted the safe combination from him. In fact, Alan had given it up the moment he had grasped what was wanted, contrary to Dave’s expectations, and causing Dave some degree of disappointment since he had carefully planned out a strategy for causing Alan maximum pain and distress, and the strategy now appeared useless and unnecessary.

Rob and Pete reemerged into the room.

“So?” said Pete.

“Got it.” said Dave.

“Let’s go, then.” said Rob.

They yanked Alan to his feet, Dave having already secured his hands behind his back with a zip tie.

“Where are you taking me?” said Alan wildly.

“Are you a moron or what?” said Dave. “Do you think we’re just going to trust you? We’re going to your office to open the safe. If you’ve lied to us, we’re coming back here to kill your wife, after we’ve cut you into pieces.”

“Please don’t hurt Sarah!” said Alan.

Dave punched him in the stomach.

“Shut your trap.” he said.

They dragged him to the door. Pete opened the door and immediately closed it again, his face turning pale.

“What?” said Rob.

“There’s police outside.” said Pete. “Looking at the van.”

Dave cursed.

“You bloody idiot!” he said. “I told you the van was hot.”

“It’s not my fault!” said Pete. “Pivo said it was legit!”

“Pivo’s a moron like you!” said Dave. “Bring him back to the living room. We’ll wait till they’ve gone.”

They began to drag Alan back to the living room.

“What if they don’t go?” said Rob.

“Then we’ll leg it out the back.” said Dave.

Rob and Dave settled down on the sofa, throwing Alan over the table face down in front of them, the candle still burning incongruously, supplying the only light in the room, while Pete nervously peered at the police through a crack in the curtains.

The table was of an unusual design. Alan had made it himself. It consisted of four steel legs which met at a point, then splayed out again to support a glass top. It was surprisingly robust, and its ornate design was soon about to save Alan’s life.

Years of yoga had stood Sarah in good stead. She had managed to fall down the cellar steps with a surprisingly degree of agility and elegance, and had landed at the bottom with only minor bruises. Unfortunately, once the cellar door had been slammed shut, she was stuck in total darkness.

She managed to get on her feet and began to feel around for a light switch with her face, suppressing her revulsion at the numerous spider webs she intercepted. Finally she found a switch, and she pressed it firmly with her forehead.

The ancient bulb flashed on and then immediately burned out. As its glow faded, she saw dozens of pairs of bright green eyes peering at her from cracks in the wall and from on top of and underneath every surface.

She screamed as they ran towards her, screeching.

“I think they’ve gone.” said Pete, letting the curtain fall back into place.

“You think?” said Dave.

“They’ve definitely gone.” said Pete.

The men exchanged glances through their ski masks.

“Let’s go, then.” said Dave, and he yanked Alan up from the table by the back of his sweater. “Don’t try anything.” he told Alan. “You try to run, or you attract attention in any way, and we’ll butcher you.”

“Please …” Alan whispered hoarsely, the front of the neck of his sweater constricting his breathing, “what have you done with Sarah?”

“Don’t worry about her, mate.” said Dave. “She’ll be fine, as long as you’ve given us the right combination.”

At that moment the living room door was flung open.

Standing there, covered in hideously abnormal mice, was Sarah.

The mice had chewed through the zip ties and had eaten patches of her clothes, but Sarah herself appeared untouched.

Sarah ran towards Alan, sobbing hysterically. The mice jumped and fell off her, running at the three men with a hideous collective screeching. Sarah nimbly jumped up onto the table with Alan. Alan, wide-eyed with terror, and Sarah, crying uncontrollably, watched by the light of the candle as the men attempted ineffectually to throw the mice off themselves, eventually sinking to the ground, bleeding heavily, and then lying still as the mice consumed them.

Some of the mice attempted to climb onto the table, but found the glass top supported by the four steel legs that tapered to a point underneath, an insurmountable obstacle.

Eventually, against Alan’s recommendations and pleading, Sarah jumped down and called for help. As before, the mice ignored her.

By this time, the three men were already beyond saving, and it was another two hours before paramedics were able to get close enough to administer medical intervention. The mice had to be pulled off the men one by one by an expert animal handler wearing full-body protection.

Further experts were soon called in to trap any mice that hadn’t escaped the cellar, and the house was soon given the all-clear, but Sarah and Alan were left without any real explanation as to what, exactly had happened.

It was noted that a homeless man had been found partially eaten in a nearby street a year previously, suggesting that the mice had not remained entirely confined to the cellar.

Then, almost a year later, they came across a bundle of papers in the attic.

Alan excitedly read out several key extracts to Sarah.

I have been able to successfully modify the mice at the genetic level, in a way that causes them to express extreme aggression. The creatures particularly attack soft vulnerable body parts, such as the eyes.

And later:

The aggression system is activated by subtle odours characteristic of the breakdown of testosterone. I have cautiously carried out certain experiments, and I am absolutely convinced the mice will attack neither women nor children. In fact, they have an aversion to all flesh other than that of male mammals. They are the perfect weapon; they are capable of vigorously attacking an army of men, while leaving women and children entirely alone.

“The man was absolutely insane.” said Sarah.

“Well,” said Alan, inhaling deeply in order to calm himself after reading the unnerving text, “let’s not speak ill of the dead.”

It started much like any other day. He awoke at 5.30am and stumbled into the shower, leaving his wife, Patricia, sleeping peacefully in bed. He shaved, quickly ate some toast and drank some coffee, then walked half an hour to the tube station, where he got onto a graffiti-covered metro. He changed lines twice, and eventually emerged in a grey, ugly suburb with an unsettlingly unsafe atmosphere, surrounded by large concrete tower blocks.

After a further half-hour walk, he arrived at the offices of Richley, Richley and Pearson. There he sat down on a broken office chair and began working at a computer.

His colleague Dave, sitting opposite him, sighed heavily when he sat down. Other than that, Ray’s arrival elicited no reaction.

Ray continued reading the file he’d been assigned. It was a seemingly-endless legal document that rambled on for tens of thousands of words. It was very hard to concentrate on the document, but Ray was determined to get through it.

He’d been reading for half an hour when his boss, Al, appeared.

“A word with you in my office, Ray.” said Al.

Ray followed him silently into the enormous corner office. Al’s office was the only nice bit of the entire building as far as Ray had been able to determine. It looked out onto the tops of the only trees for five blocks, at the back of the building.

“Ray, Ray, Ray.” said Al, shaking his head.

Ray’s face registered surprise at Al’s tone, but he said nothing, since it wasn’t at all clear what Al was driving at.

Al produced a wad of papers, holding them in both hands, and dropped them on the massive desk in front of Ray.

“Did you print out some of this and take it home?”

Ray looked at the top two or three papers.

“Yes.” said Ray. “There’s nearly a hundred thousand words of dense legal text and I’m supposed to understand it all in-depth by Thursday. I printed out fifty pages so I could read them on the tube.”

“I’m going to have to let you go, Ray.” said his boss.

“What?” said Ray. “Why?”

“Sarbanes-Oxley. This is a direct contravention.”

“There was literally no other way I could do what you asked me to get done. No-one else here could have done it, even if they’d taken the whole thing home with them!”

“Sorry, Ray.” said Al. “Out of my hands. You’ll need to collect your things from your desk. Security will see you out.”

Al pressed a button on his desk and two security officers entered the room.

The officers watched as Ray collected a few meagre possessions from his desk and put them in a box that one of the security men had handed to him. The two men carefully checked everything he placed in the box.

As he was walking away, Dave said “Loser!”, half-hiding it with a fake cough.

Dave had never liked Ray. But then, Dave had never liked anyone.

Ray looked back despairingly at him but said nothing.

He soon found himself standing outside the grey office block holding the brown box in both hands.

The nearest public transport was a half-hour walk away. He began walking towards the tube station, and on the way he emptied the box carelessly into a litter bin and left the box on top of the bin.

Then he remembered he’d had a photograph of his wife on his desk. He went back to the bin and picked out the photograph, which was in a little stand. This he placed in the inside pocket of his jacket, and continued on his way.

The metro was delayed by an hour due to someone leaping fatally onto the tracks, but eventually it turned up. He sat down on the only available seat, which was facing the wrong way. An obese woman sat down next to him, and opposite sat a teenager who was playing music via a portable speaker.

The teenager glared at him defiantly.

It was a relief to get out of the metro station. He took his phone out of his pocket to call his wife and let her know he’d be home early, but almost as soon as the phone was in his hand, someone riding past on a moped snatched it out of his hand.

He hurried home so he could try to remotely wipe the device. There was no point reporting the theft to the police. The police wouldn’t care about a phone, or really any kind of theft at all.

When he entered the door of his house, a semi-detached suburban construction that Ray’s wife liked but that Ray had always privately considered a monstrosity, Ray found his wife struggling with a suitcase.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Are you going somewhere?”

An unfamiliar man appeared from the staircase.

“Why are you back so early?” said Patricia, shocked.

“I got fired.”

The strange man put his arm around Ray’s wife and the shocked expression faded from Patricia’s face, to be replaced with a hard resolve.

“Ray, I’m leaving you.” she said.

“What?”

“Sorry, Ray. It hasn’t been working between us for a long time. You know that.”

“What hasn’t been working?” said Ray, utterly baffled.

“You and me, Ray. It doesn’t work.”

“But, I love you.” said Ray.

“You’ll find someone else.” said his wife, as the man ushered her out of the door, taking her suitcase.

“Nice to finally meet you, Ray.” said the man over his shoulder.

Ray collapsed at the kitchen table and burst into tears.

The following day, Ray began looking for a small flat he could rent on his own. Clearly he couldn’t afford to keep up the mortgage payments on the house. Besides, the thought of the strange man carousing with his wife in the house when he was away at work made him want to leave the house and never return to it.

Renting somewhere proved difficult. Landlords all wanted proof of income. Ray had some savings, but even he himself wasn’t entirely sure how he would cover the rent in the long term, although by the time he began looking for a new place, he had already sent off his CV to five possible employers.

He was passing what looked like a dilapidated ruin of a building when he noticed a “For Rent” notice attached to it, together with a phone number. He’d already purchased another cheap phone with a built-in camera, and he took a photograph of the number. The building itself couldn’t possibly be for rent; it was too run-down. The advert, he thought, must refer to some other, perhaps adjacent property.

Only five days later, after a very unpleasant talk with his bank, was Ray desperate enough to actually call the number. A gruff-sounding man answered.

“It’s liveable inside.” said the man. “Four hundred quid a month. Cash. You’ll not get cheaper than that round here.”

“Can I view it?” said Ray.

“Tomorrow, 5pm.” said the man.

“All right.” said Ray.

“Don’t be late. I’m a busy man.”

Ray told himself he was just going to look at the building out of curiosity, but the fact was that he was getting quite desperate to find somewhere to live. Increasingly he was casting his mind back to various hikes when he was younger, and telling himself that in the worst case, he could live in a tent till he got back on his feet.

He met the man outside the run-down building as arranged. The man said his name was Spog. Whether that was his given name or surname, Ray didn’t enquire.

Inside, the house resembled a ruin just as much as on the outside, but a ruin in which some minimal care had been taken to render it, as Spog had put it, “liveable.”

The kitchen consisted of a collection of cheap appliances and a relatively new cast-iron sink, although the walls consisted of rough brick, with old plaster adhering to the bricks here and there. In the bathroom was a filthy old shower with cracked tiles, but a new boiler successfully supplied hot water.

At least it was somewhere to live, Ray thought. He could live there till he found a new job, then get somewhere better. A month or two at the most.

“I’d pay two hundred.” said Ray.

Spog laughed.

“Two hundred? You must be mental.” he said. “This is London, mate. Two hundred wouldn’t get you a rabbit hutch for a week. Three-fifty and it’s yours.”

“Three hundred.”

Spog sighed.

“All right, three hundred. I want two month’s rent as a deposit in case you wreck it, and the first month’s rent in advance.”

Ray’s mind went to the balance of his bank account. He had enough to cover it, but then he’d have nothing left and would have to tap into his savings.

“Wreck it?” he said, growing in confidence since he could tell Spog was keen to let the place. “It’s already wrecked. One month’s deposit.”

“Cash.” said Spog.

“I’ll go to the cash machine immediately.”

The deal was concluded with Ray signing a contract on which Spog’s name and address were illegible, following which Spog handed him the key to the front door. Ray proceeded to sell whatever of his belongings could be sold, and the rest he threw away or left on the street for passers-by to take.

It was as if a switch had flipped in Ray’s brain. His life had crumbled and dissolved; now he had a new life, and he felt ready to throw himself into it, however disturbing it would appear to his friends and former colleagues.

That evening he sat on the floor in his new place and gazed at the plaster peeling off the bricks and the ants and spiders scurrying to and fro on the old rotting floorboards. Then he felt around in the pockets of his three jackets, eventually locating a credit card. He then made his way to the nearest off-licence and purchased two bottles of wine. He drunk almost an entire bottle while sitting on the floor again, eating sausage rolls from a bakery he’d passed on the way to the off-licence.

He decided to buy a second-hand sofa. It would be nice to have somewhere to sit.

Suitably fortified by the wine, he set out to explore what he’d rented.

There seemed to be only one floor to it. Two upper floors technically existed, but the staircase was boarded up and an official-looking sign had been pinned to the boards. It said, “Do not enter. Danger of death.”

He also found a cellar. At first the cellar door proved a formidable obstacle, but soon he found a rusty old key. Descending the steps, he encountered a room almost ankle-deep in filthy water, with the rotting remains of an armchair standing in one corner. The light, a single bulb hanging on a wire from the ceiling, still worked, and this somehow amused him, and he ascended the stairs laughing to himself.

As he was mounting the top stair, the door frame caught his attention. It was extraordinarily thick and broad, and was painted with fresh white paint. It looked as though it had been built to withstand earthquakes, and stood in sharp contrast to everything else in the house, which was rotting and falling apart.

That night Ray fell asleep on a yoga mat his wife had left in their old house, wondering about the previous occupants of his new abode, and why they had taken so much trouble over a doorframe and almost nothing else. Had they intended the doorframe to become the starting point of an ambitious attempt at renovation? There seemed no other explanation.

The following morning, Ray’s wife called.

He was eating instant noodles when his phone rang.

“Hello.” he said, unsure of how to speak to her now that their relationship had abruptly and irrevocably altered.

“Ray have you seen my yoga mat?” she said.

Ray looked down at the mat he was sitting on.

“No.” he said. “I’ve moved out. I’m in my new place now. You can go and look for it if you want.”

“Never mind.” said his wife. “Ray, we need to meet to discuss some things. Bills, who’s going to take what, that sort of thing.”

“You can have the house and whatever else you want.” said Ray. “I haven’t got any money. So that’s that.”

“Ray, are you drunk?”

“I’ve only had two glasses this morning. Of —” he picked up the bottle of wine and peered at the label. Very little light made its way between the slats of the boarded-up window. “—White Zinfadel 2023.”

“We still need to meet Ray. I’ll come to your new place. Where are you?”

He dutifully gave her his new address and they arranged to meet the following morning.

After the call ended, he realised he was rather short of clean clothes, so he took some clothes to a public laundry. For lunch, he ate chips, then he visited a supermarket and bought some bread and cheese for later. The house had no fridge, but Ray felt the cheese would last a while without one.

He knew he ought to start applying for more jobs, but he couldn’t face it. The thought of talking to recruiters, or of having to sit in an interview and pretend not only to be normal, but to be positively enthusiastic about whatever stupid task they’d got for him, was unbearable.

In the evening he began to make a thorough exploration of the crumbling house.

Even a cursory search revealed areas of unexpected filth and abundant evidence of insect life, but the place was so far gone and his contract of such dubious enforceability that attempting to improve it seemed pointless.

While inspecting the brickwork, wondering if it was actually capable of supporting the inaccessible structure above it, he discovered a loose brick.

Behind it, he found a key.

The key closely resembled the key to the cellar door. He fetched the cellar door key and compared the two. They were identical except the new key had an extra bit that was missing from the cellar key.

It seemed there ought to be another door that this new key must open, but after a thorough search, he concluded that if such a door existed, it must be upstairs, in the inaccessible part of the building.

Following his search, he made more instant noodles and sat on a blanket in the middle of the floor eating them, gazing at the crumbling walls. At three hundred a month, if he rearranged his money between different accounts, tapping into his small Bitcoin investment, his money would last a while. Maybe even a year. A year without working. The thought brought a smile to his face.

The following morning, Ray’s wife knocked at the door.

“Ray!” she said, when he answered. “I thought I must have got the wrong place.”

“No.” he said. “It’s the right place. Come in.”

“Christ, Ray.” she said, eyeing the half-ruined interior of the building. “What are you doing here?”

She was carrying a cardboard box, which she dropped unceremoniously on the floor.

“Well,” said Ray, “my wife left me and I lost my job and I can’t afford the mortgage on our house by myself, so I rented this place. It’s actually growing on me.”

“You’re blaming me, now? It’s not my fault you lost your job.”

“I’m not blaming you. Just, I don’t understand …”

“I fell in love with someone else, Ray. People change. It’s quite simple.”

Ray quietly digested the information.

“I haven’t changed.” he said.

“That’s the problem, Ray.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed theatrically.

“Let’s not talk about this now.”

Ray nodded slowly, a resigned expression on his face.

“What’s in the box?” he said finally.

“Stuff from the house that I don’t need.”

“Thanks.” said Ray.

“Is there anywhere to sit?”

“Not really. We can sit on the floor. I’ve got a blanket.”

He had taken care to hide the yoga mat before Patricia’s arrival.

“Fine, I’ll stand.” she said, frostily.

“Trish …” he said.

“What?” said Trish.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Ray’s wife sighed again in frustration.

“I didn’t come here to discuss this. We have practical affairs to sort out.”

“I just need to know.” he said, tears forming in his eyes.

Inwardly he cursed himself for being so pathetic. His wife had never been the type of person who responded well to self-pity.

She paused, watching him, coldly gauging his emotional state, then said, “You’re a very boring man, Ray. I need someone more exciting in my life. When I met Roy, I realised what I’d been missing.”

“His name’s Roy?” said Ray incredulously.

“Can we please talk about the bill situation?”

“That’s all it was? I wasn’t exciting enough?”

“Ray, look around you. This is so Ray. I need someone ambitious. Someone with get-up-and-go. I honestly think you’d be happy living in a shed.”

Ray thought of a shed, perhaps high on a hillside somewhere. Perhaps he could get water from a spring. She was right. He might well be happy in a shed. He’d got the job at Richley, Richley and Pearson just to please her.

“Fair enough.” he said. “So, bills.”

Before leaving, she phoned Roy to come and pick her up. Ray showed her to the door, and a sports car appeared outside, with loud music emerging from it. He caught a brief glimpse of the driver: a pink shirt, sunglasses, gelled hair. His wife got into the car and it shot off with squealing tyres.

He began to rake despondently through the box. It contained only useless things Patricia herself had purchased, and had decided she didn’t like. A cold, icy hand seemed to grasp his heart. He took the box to the cellar door, unlocked the door, and threw the box in, shutting the door again afterwards.

This world is a cold place, he thought to himself. But wasn’t he the architect of his own misfortune? He’d chosen to marry Trish, after all. In the final analysis, it was he himself who had made the critical mistake, by marrying someone who didn’t really care about him. The world supplies an endless parade of uncaring people and he had married one of them, quite knowingly.

Then he realised he’d seen something unexpected. For a second he was confused; a striking but undefinable vision seemed to have made its way unbidden into his mind.

The cellar. There was something unusual about the cellar.

He unlocked the door again, opened it, and stood staring in disbelief.

Where before there had been a short flight of steps leading down to a waterlogged cellar, now stood a vast dark uneven landscape, dotted here and there by twisted dead trees. The items from the box mostly still lay at his feet, just across the threshold, a few of the lighter objects having been blown some metres by a piercing hollow wind.

How was it possible? The landscape resembled nothing that could be found in London.

The answer suggested itself immediately: nuclear bombs had fallen shortly after Patricia had departed, and this was all that was left of London. He rushed to the front door and flung it open, but outside the ugly street was still there and the sun was still intermittently attempting to break through grey clouds.

Ray shut the door again and went back to the cellar. The barren, alien landscape still stood there, where the cellar steps should be. In the distance there was a small house or shed, and aside from that, the rest appeared to consist of ugly hilly wilderness.

Panicking, Ray pulled the cellar door shut.

That stuff definitely hadn’t been there earlier. Why was it there now? How could it even be there? He took the key from the lock and it was then that he realised he’d accidentally used the key that he’d found behind the brick, instead of the usual cellar key.

He proceeded to carry out systematic experiments, and indeed he found that one key opened the cellar door in the usual fashion, while the other key, from behind the loose brick, opened the door onto the strange dark landscape.

The difference must have something to do with the unusually large doorframe, he decided. It must have some kind of mechanism built into it.

He was pondering the matter when a knock at the front door startled him. He hastily shut the cellar door and went to see who it was.

“Chris!” he said, upon opening the front door. “What are you doing here?”

“You invited me. Don’t you remember?”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You said, ‘come round sometime’. So I’m here.”

An amused frown appeared on Chris’s face.

“Sorry, if it’s not a good time I’ll come back another time. I was in the area anyway. My studio’s three blocks away.”

“No, no, it’s a great time. Come in.” said Ray.

Chris gawped at the interior of the house in surprise, but refrained from commenting on it. Instead, he said, “So what’s up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem in a daze.”

“Pat just visited. It’s probably that.”

“She was never right for you anyway, if I’m honest.” said Chris.

“What do you mean?” said Ray.

“She’s a bit … materialistic.”

Ray stared at Chris and for a second Chris thought Ray was going to explode at him. But Ray only burst into laughter.

“Yeah.” he said. “You’re not wrong.”

“I should introduce you to my friend Lorna.” said Chris. “She’s more your kind of girl.”

“It’s a bit soon. Trish has only just dumped me.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Hey, this place is quite something. Are you really living here?”

“Sure, why not? It’s cheap.”

“You don’t say.” said Chris.

Ray fell silent, wondering whether he should show Chris the strange landscape beyond the cellar door.

“You all right?” said Chris.

“Oh!” said Ray. “Yes, I was just thinking about something. Actually I want to show you something.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s going to blow your mind.”

“Really?”

“I promise, you’ve never seen anything like it.”

“What is it?”

“You won’t believe me if I tell you. I’ll have to show you. Get ready to be amazed.”

Ray unlocked the cellar door and, standing by the side of it, flung it open.

“That’s really something.” said Chris.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“Yeah. My aunt’s cellar got flooded once.”

“What?” said Ray, and he came around the door to see for himself.

Where he had expected to see a wilderness, was now only a short staircase leading down to a flooded basement.

“This isn’t it!” he said, and he shut the door, locked it, then unlocked it and opened it again, with the same result.

“Dammit!” said Ray. “This isn’t supposed to be here.”

He repeated the procedure, locking and unlocking the door, and then again, a fourth time, always with the same result.

“How about I make you a nice cup of tea?” said Chris. “You’ve got tea, haven’t you?”

Ray was standing staring into the cellar, baffled.

“I-I’ll make us a tea.” he said.

“The mental strain is getting to you.”

“You’re probably right.”

After Chris had left, Ray opened the cellar door again. There, on the steps, were some of the objects from the box his wife had pushed into his hands, but others were nowhere to be seen, and the box itself had vanished.

He blinked heavily, and shut the door, locking it.

Obviously Chris was right. The mental strain had affected him to the point where he was hallucinating entire landscapes.

He was about to go and lie down when an irrational obsessive impulse seized him, and he unlocked the door and opened it again.

It was there; the whole thing. In front of his very eyes was a repulsive windswept vista. He could feel the freezing wind blowing on his face. In the distance was a small shack. He hesitated, then stepped through the door and onto a damp gravelly surface covered in dead weeds. Then he stepped back again into his house.

With sudden resolve, he put on a jacket and walked purposefully out into the wild landscape, towards the shack in the distance. The wind blew particles of gravel against his face and there was a faint foetid odour in the air.

There was a slight gradient leading up to the hut and Ray was surprised by how out of breath he became. He was unsure about whether this was due to his lack of physical fitness or some property of the air.

As he walked he began to wonder where he was, and it occurred to him that he might not even be on Planet Earth. A few stars were visible above him, and indeed they appeared quite unfamiliar. Looking around, he spotted a half-moon, of a strange reddish hue and smaller than our own moon. A thrill of excitement shot through him; he had somehow become the first man ever to travel to another planet. But no, not quite the first. Someone had designed the cellar-door portal, and probably whoever it was had built the hut that he was steadily progressing towards.

Then a sudden frisson of fear washed over him. Was he in danger? What if there were wild animals roaming these morbid hills? What if something awful lived in the hut?

By then he was halfway there.

The wind had a strange quality to it and seemed to whistle unsettlingly with a high-pitched whistle; faint, but irritating. Neither did the air smell exactly clean; it stank of decaying vegetation.

Finally he reached the hut. The hut was bigger than it had seemed in the distance; perhaps even as large as typical suburban house in terms of its footprint. It had no windows and it was made of wood. In structure and fabric it appeared oddly familiar; it closely resembled the kind of shed one can buy and assemble for garden use, although it was unusually large.

The door stood slightly ajar. With a fast-beating heart, he swung it open.

An overpowering stench of decaying flesh assaulted his nostrils. Something had clearly died in the hut.

At first he could see nothing in the gloom, and he regretted not bringing a flashlight with him. He felt around on the wall inside for a light switch. He could feel numerous spider webs on his hand, and he hoped fervently that these were English spiders and not some poisonous tropical variety, or worse, alien spiders of unknown habits.

His hand lighted on a switch, and he pushed it firmly. Strip lights flicked on in the roof of the hut, to reveal a hideous sight.

Surrounded by vast curtains of spider web, containing many grotesquely large spiders, was the body of a man, hanging by the neck from thin rafters supporting the ceiling.

For some moments he was paralysed with shock, then he rushed forwards to see if the man was still alive, even though it was apparent from the smell that he probably wasn’t.

Indeed the man proved to be quite dead, and he had clearly died a while ago.

Aside from the corpse and the enormous spider webs, the hut contained tables and trestles filled with scientific apparatus, and on one he spotted a pile of journals.

He found sticks for hiking propped against a wall and began to use them to clear a space through the spider webs. The spiders, which seemed largely of familiar types but unnaturally distended and of unusual size, scurried away.

When he reached the pile of journals he began to leaf through them, and soon an extraordinary story emerged; a story which threw Ray into a semi-panic.

The corpse evidently belonged to a man by the name of Eugene Redford, who had worked as a physicist before developing an obsession with certain unorthodox theories of physics. He had rented the half-ruined house where Ray currently lived with a view to testing his theories in an environment somewhat more robust than his customary abode, wherever that was.

Redford had successfully opened portals to a series of locations on distant planets, eventually settling on one particular planet as the one most capable of supporting life out of all of them. This planet, the one where he had constructed the hut and had ultimately taken his own life, happened to have a breathable atmosphere, but he had found it very difficult to maintain any kind of plant life on it, due to an extremely changeable climate.

At one point the journals appeared full of optimism, and Redford had succeeded in covering a wide expanse with grass, and even trees had begun to thrive there, but then the weather had turned sour and most of the plant life had simply died.

The circumstances that had led to Redford’s death were as follows.

The portal, as Ray had discovered, was activated by a particular key, turned in the cellar door. However, the mechanism had proven temperamental, and evidently Redford’s practical skills lagged somewhat behind his astonishing fluency with obscure and innovative theories of physics.

Upon stepping onto the planet and closing the cellar door behind him, the portal would deactivate, as a security measure. It could be reactivated by flicking a certain switch and re-opening the door from the side of the alien planet.

One day, after working on something in the laboratory hut that he had built in the barren wilderness, Redford had returned to the portal only to find it absolutely refused to activate. He had eventually concluded that something was seriously wrong with it and had tried to fix the putative problem, but had realised he was lacking certain key tools that he felt were needed for the job.

He had spent six months marooned on the planet, gradually starving, consuming all of his supplies, until eventually he had taken in his own life, pitifully emaciated and having lost all hope of ever returning home to Planet Earth.

Ray stood staring at the journal in his hands, shocked at the possible implications for his own situation. But then he remembered that he hadn’t closed the cellar door behind him. He rushed outside, and thought he could see the faint light of his primitive living room and kitchen shining through the open portal. He began to run towards it, and indeed found it open. He ran back home into his living room, finally collapsing on the yoga mat on the floor, since he still hadn’t purchased a sofa.

Over the next few days he pondered what to do with the portal, torn between wanting to tell people about it, but on the other hand deriving a deep satisfaction from being the only man alive on the Earth to have access to a whole vast alien planet.

He decided he needed to bring Redford’s body back to the Earth. He owed the man that, at least. He would buy a child’s sledge, load the body onto it, and drag it back into the living room. Then he would tell the police he’d discovered the body in his cellar. At least then any family that Redford happened to have would be able to stop wondering about his disappearance.

He put the plan into action the following week. Redford was still heavy even though emaciated, and Ray had no desire to embrace the decaying corpse, so he stationed a plastic sledge underneath the body and cut it down. Then he spent some time straightening it and tying it to the sledge. Finally he dragged it back to the portal, where he had wedged the cellar door firmly open with several bricks.

He was pulling Redford’s body into the house, the sledge having jammed against the lower edge of the rectangular doorframe, when the door of the house opened and his wife appeared.

“Ray! What in Heaven’s name?” said his wife, covering her mouth with her hand in shock.

She walked towards him and soon saw the barren windswept landscape.

“It’s a kind of portal.” said Ray, weakly.

“What’s that awful smell?” she asked.

There was nothing for it but to explain everything to Patricia. She immediately began to take charge, as was her habit.

“Put the body back on the other planet for now, Ray.” she said. “Leave it with me. I’ll discuss it with Roy. He’s good with these kinds of things.”

“Really?” said Ray.

“While we’re on the topic,” said Patricia, “I came here to give you these.”

She pushed some papers into his hands.

“Divorce papers.” she said. “I need you to sign them. I’ll be back in a week to collect them. And I’ll draw up a plan for what to do about the portal.”

After she left, Ray felt horribly deflated, to the point of being quite depressed again. What had been his, was now hers.

He glumly considered his options. He could tell other people about the portal; university professors, perhaps. Or the police? But then he would lose all rights over it. At least as things stood, Trish would surely have to acknowledge that he had certain rights as the portal’s discoverer. After all, he was renting the house in which it stood. Perhaps it was best to simply wait and see what she proposed.

He dragged the body back onto the alien planet and left it near the portal, but far enough away that one could at least come and go without looking at it too closely.

Shortly afterwards, Patricia and Roy arrived rapidly at certain mutual conclusions.

“His life insurance policy is still valid.” said Patricia. “I was going to drop it but, imagine if he were to starve himself to death in his own house. Perhaps due to a broken heart.”

“Do you really think he’d starve himself to death?” said Roy.

“No, silly.” she said, slapping his arm playfully. “We’ll make him show us the planet, then we’ll run back through the portal and leave him there. Then he’ll starve. It’s what he deserves after how he treated me.”

“I thought you said he loved you and he was incredibly attentive.” said Roy.

“Yes, but he knew I wanted to study ballet and instead I had to work to help pay off our mortgage.”

Roy shook his head sympathetically. “I’d never do that to you, my darling.” he said.

“I know you wouldn’t, dear Roy.” said Patricia. “You’re so much more successful than him, with your business and your yacht. We can’t risk you losing all that just because of some silly fine you have to pay, just because some idiot customer claims your herbal supplements destroyed his liver. Ray’s life insurance would cover most of the settlement or whatever it is.”

“But wouldn’t we need his body to actually claim it? If he just goes missing, it could be seven years before we can get him declared dead. I looked into it in connection with my ex.”

“We’ll have his body. After a suitable amount of time—let’s say, two months—we’ll open the portal and retrieve it. Then I’ll say I found it in his cellar.”

“Is two months enough?”

“He’s very thin. I think so.”

“You’re a genius, my petal.”

“I know.” said Patricia, blushing and smiling prettily.

Ray suspected nothing when Patricia turned up the following week, ostensibly to collect the divorce papers. He thought it a little insensitive that she had brought Roy with her, but then, that was Trish all over.

“Ray, I want you to show Roy the portal.” said Patricia.

“Don’t you want the divorce papers?” said Ray.

“We’ll deal with that in a minute.”

Ray took the old rusty key, turned it in the lock of the cellar door and flung the door open, revealing the alien barren landscape beyond.

“Incredible.” said Roy.

“So, did you … come up with some kind of plan?” said Ray nervously.

“We certainly did, Ray.” said Patricia. “We know exactly what to do. First let’s take a closer look. We want to see the hut.”

“There’s nothing much there apart from spider’s webs and the journals, and there’s no technical information in the journals. I checked.”

“Doesn’t matter.” said Patricia. “Come on.”

She stepped out onto the grey rocky ground, beckoning him eagerly. Roy followed, and Ray was about to follow them too, when there was a loud crack, a small bright flash of light, a puff of smoke, and the portal vanished.

In a panic, Ray desperately tried to get the portal to work again, opening and closing the door, locking and unlocking it, but every time he opened the door, he saw only the short flight of steps leading down to the cellar.

For two months he worked tirelessly on the portal, gradually disassembling the door frame and attempting to determine where the mechanism had broken. The task proved impossible. The entire mechanism of the portal was itself unknown and obscure, and the entire thing was embedded in a solid block of epoxy resin, the resin surrounding every component.

After two months, he gave up, and lapsed into despair.

His loyal friend, Chris, tried his best to console him.

“It wasn’t your fault, Ray.” said Chris, as they sat together on the worn-out uncomfortable sofa Ray had bought for the living room.

“To die alone in a place like that …” said Ray, allowing the sentence to trail off.

“She wasn’t alone.” said Chris gently. “She had Roy.”

A range of emotions took their place rapidly one after the other in Ray’s eyes: a faint relief, then pain, hurt, disappointment, guilt.

“I suppose.” said Ray.

“Ray, I can lend you some money if you like.” said Chris. “You can get yourself out of here. Find a job.”

Ray shook his head.

“I can’t borrow money from you.” he said. “This is what I deserve.”

After that, abandoning hope, he tried only intermittently to get the portal to work, certain that Patricia must have starved to death.

But he was wrong: Patricia was still alive.

Six weeks later, Patricia’s body was found, in a forest in Northumberland. Police were baffled by her emaciated appearance. The autopsy only raised more questions. She had clearly died from starvation, but human flesh was found in her stomach; the flesh of a man named Roy, as determined by DNA analysis. Particles of earth of unknown origin were found under her fingernails, and it appeared she had wandered the forest only for a matter of hours before expiring. Police were not able to determine where she had spent the past three and a half months, nor how she had ended up in the forest.

“I suppose it malfunctioned.” said Ray, when he eventually told the story, two years later, to his new fiancé, Clara. “She must have tried over and over again to get back through the portal, and somehow it eventually spat her out in the forest. Something I did to the portal must have caused it to temporarily half-work.

“Where is it now?” asked Clara. She had been somewhat perplexed by the shocking story, but the grave expression on Ray’s face proved to her that this was no joke.

They were sitting at a table outside a cafe in the south of France. Ray was wearing a crisp white shirt and sunglasses; Clara, a summery dress, her sunglasses perched on the top of her head.

“Still in the house.” said Ray. “I bought the palce with the life insurance money, along with the new house.”

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to fix it?”

Ray shook his head thoughtfully.

“I can’t even begin to understand how it works.” he said. “I look at it from time to time. Perhaps the secret’s best off remaining with its inventor.”

I won’t waste time speculating on the precise nature of the relationship of the three hikers. There are those who claim that Anna was previously dating Simon, but they had split up and she was now dating Joe. These facts are unverifiable and, in my view, irrelevant to the story.

Some biographical details, however, are perhaps in order. All three were medical students. Simon was perhaps the most imaginative of the three and enjoyed playing classical guitar in his spare time. Joe has been described as down-to-earth, brooking no nonsense, and the son of an electrician. Some of his friends have noted that he had a temper and could be unexpectedly provoked to flashes of anger on occasion, particularly when he felt things weren’t going his way, but this alleged propensity plays little part in our story. Anna was known for her calm demeanour and was an avid tennis player, in addition to her love of hiking.

While none of them were serious mountaineers, all three were in the process of gradually tackling more and more challenging climbs, graduating slowly from simple hillwalking to hikes involving fixing ropes and scrabbling up and down steep slopes.

This largely explains how they were able to stumble upon the village, in spite of all precautions taken by the British government to render it unreachable.

The established fact is that they began by climbing Ben Nevis, but were disappointed to find the top covered in ice. It was Simon who then proposed they trek further west, in the hope of finding mountains that were less icy but also represented a greater technical challenge than the long walk up Scotland’s highest mountain.

All three of the trio were English, and almost entirely ignorant of the geography of Scotland, aside from having seen a few towns and cities, and having some vague ideas about the Isles of Skye and Mull. In the event, as far as I’ve been able to determine from available sources, and in spite of the recalcitrance of the survivors on certain topics, they likely headed north-east toward Loch Hourn.

They had been hiking three days, admiring the snow-capped peaks and broad sweeping moors covered in heather, when they encountered the village of Fruitley. Their route seems to have been anything but a straight line, so it’s really impossible to use this information to determine the location of the village.

Anna was immediately intrigued by the village’s unusual name, and Simon and Joe fascinated by the high fence that surrounded the village.

“It’s an abandoned village.” said Simon, in astonishment.

The signpost, bearing only the name “Fruitley”, was covered in grime and might easily have struck them as sinister had they been properly on their guard, but they had no reason to fear the place, and only charming old stone houses were visible beyond the fence.

“But why is it abandoned?” said Joe.

“Probably just depopulation.” said Simon. “People aren’t having children anymore and immigrants don’t want to come to the middle of nowhere.”

“Why the fence?” said Anna, posing the obvious question.

“Just to stop looters I would think.” said Simon.

They skirted around the edge and apparently found a point where the fence had been cut open. Many commentators—including the few politicians who were willing to speak with me—have argued they must have cut the fence themselves, but it’s certainly not impossible that they were not the first to stumble upon the village. It’s also possible that the hole was cut not to get in, but by someone who wanted to get out. There is simply no way to know. If cut by someone escaping from the village, the most likely outcome is that this individual or individuals died somewhere on the surrounding moors and hills.

They slipped through the hole and made their way into a charming network of old cottages.

“There’s literally no-one here.” said Simon, amazed.

“Let’s leave our stuff here while we have a look.” said Joe, and they removed their rucksacks, leaning them against the fence.

From the available descriptions, we might estimate that Fruitley was home, at its peak—whenever that was—to somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred individuals.

The settlement wasn’t large, but it wasn’t insignificant.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” said Anna, gazing in wonder at the beautiful quaint houses, most of them without even so much as a broken window.

“I don’t know if we ought to be here.” said Joe.

“What do you mean?” said Simon.

“What if it’s like that island they deliberately infected with anthrax? Some kind of experimental place. We might be in danger.”

“Don’t be so soft.” said Simon. “There’d be notices up if there was any danger.”

“They wouldn’t infect a place on the mainland.” said Anna. “Might be a problem with subsidence or something.”

“Nothing we can’t cope with.” said Simon.

They explored the village, tentatively at first, but growing bolder as they realised the entire place really was empty. Soon they were exploring gardens and back yards, and it was perhaps inevitable that one of them should soon suggest entering one of the abandoned houses.

It’s unclear exactly whose this idea was, but Anna protested.

“We can’t do that!”

“Why not?” said Simon. “They’re all abandoned.”

“I’m not breaking in anywhere.” said Joe. “If we can find an open door, then I don’t see a problem.”

They began to try front doors, to see if any were open, and soon they found one that was unlocked.

Inside, the house was full of flies.

“Disgusting.” said Anna, brushing them off her face.

“Looks like they left in a hurry.” said Joe.

On the table was a bowl that might once have contained cereal and milk. It was half-empty and had a spoon stuck in it. Now, it was nothing but a huge mass of furry mould. A glass of what might once have been orange juice stood next to it, mould flowing out over the side of the glass.

As they explored further, they found disquieting signs that the occupant or occupants may not have left entirely voluntarily.

Here and there, household objects smashed on the floor provided evidence of some kind of a struggle.

“You know what I think?” said Joe. “I think there was some kind of disaster, like an earthquake, and not all of them left voluntarily.”

“If there was an earthquake, why haven’t the houses fallen down?” said Simon.

“I’m not saying an earthquake. I’m saying something like an earthquake.”

“What’s like an earthquake but not an earthquake?”

“Maybe there was an outbreak of plague.” said Anna.

“There’s been no plague in Britain since 1666 or something.” said Simon.

“Let’s get out of here.” said Anna.

They went outside into the deserted street. Weeds were growing up between ancient cobblestones, as if the village had been deserted for some months, but not longer. As Joe pointed out, if the place had been abandoned for longer than a few months, they’d be seeing trees sprouting up through cracks in the road.

Simon had fallen unusually quiet, seemingly brooding about something.

“Maybe we should leave.” said Joe glumly. “Whatever happened here, I feel like we’re best off not knowing about it.

“We may as well explore the whole place while we’re here.” said Simon. “It’s only a small village. Five minutes and we’re at the other side.”

“We’ll just walk across it, then we’ll leave.” said Joe.

“Let’s just go back the way we came.” said Anna.

“Simon’s right.” said Joe. “Might as well see the whole thing. Anyway, I’ll admit I’m curious. There’s a mystery about this place. Maybe we can make a video about it.”

Joe began to take photos with his phone. While he was engaged in doing that, with the other two waiting patiently, a scuffling sound further down the winding lane caught their attention.

“What was that?” said Anna. She was already nervous, and the noise made her jump.

“Probably a dog.” said Simon.

“No, I saw something. It was big.”

“What did you see?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know. I think it was a person.”

“I knew it.” said Simon. “There are people here.”

“Bloody hell.” said Joe. “Let’s leave before some freak attacks us or we get into trouble.”

“We can’t leave!” Simon protested. “They might need help!”

“Anyone who wanted to could just leave the way we came in.” said Anna.

“They might be ill.” said Simon.

“Or insane.” said Joe.

Simon began to walk further down the lane, and the others followed him, half-reluctantly.

Soon they came to a large grassy field surrounded by a high fence topped with coils of barbed wire. The field was filled with grass that looked like it had once been kept mown but had passed several months untended. The field and the fence around it were striking in themselves, but even more striking was a squat white building in the middle of it, two stories high. A gate at the front of the field stood half open, and weeds were growing up around it.

“That’s it, I’m leaving.” said Anna.

“Hang on a minute.” said Simon. “The solution to whatever happened to this village is almost definitely in there.”

“I don’t care.” said Anna. “Whatever it was, I don’t want it to happen to me.”

She began to walk off back down the lane.

“She’s right.” said Joe. “Sorry Simon. This is one mystery we’re better off not solving.”

He turned to follow her.

Simon began to argue, but then stopped.

At the end of the visible part of the lane, something truly grotesque shuffled into view. It appeared to be a human being, wearing rags, but its skin was nothing but a mass of scabs and weeping green pus. A few wispy strands of hair sprouted from its head and its eyes were red with blood.

It began to stagger slowly towards them, with a stooped posture curiously reminiscent of a gorilla. Instinctively, they backed away, towards the open gate.

“What is that?” said Anna.

“It’s human.” said Joe.

“We have to help.” said Simon. “It needs medical help.”

The thing, whatever it was, suddenly emitted a scream of rage and began lolloping rapidly towards them, occasionally half-falling on its hands.

“Run!” shouted Anna, and all three of them, even Simon, scrambled feverishly through the open gate.

Joe tried to shut the gate behind them but it was too overgrown with weeds and he couldn’t manage it.

“Leave it, Joe!” shouted Anna.

The creatures was approaching fast, making odd growling noises. They ran towards the squat modern building.

They were halfway across the overgrown field when the creature passed through the gate, scraping itself uncaringly against the edges of the gate and the fence as it did so.

When they reached the building, Simon tried to open a side-door but found it locked.

They ran around its perimeter, and soon discovered a gravel driveway leading off from an open front door.

Anna began to run off down the path, but Joe shouted, “Anna, look! There’s a locked gate at the end!”

Anna stopped in her tracks. Joe was right. In the distance, at the end of the driveway, stood a gate with padlocked chains wrapped around it.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the glass door at the front of the building turned out to be unlocked.

They ran into the building and Joe shut the door behind them, turning a lock.

“That’ll keep it out.” he said.

“Will it, though?” said Anna, frantically. “It looked pretty angry!”

They stood there almost paralysed with fear, wondering what to do, peering anxiously through the glass, which was blurry with accumulated filth.

Suddenly the horrible figure leapt in front of the glass and they turned and fled, terrified, into the dark interior of the building. Automatic lights blinked on in the dark corridor. As they ran, they could hear the creature flinging itself against the glass behind them.

“It’s OK, he can’t get in.” said Simon, when they eventually slowed down, panting.

“He could smash through it!” said Anna. “We need to find something we can use to defend ourselves.”

“Those doors are made of reinforced glass.” said Joe. “He probably can’t get through them.”

“I’ve seen people smashing through glass doors in videos.” said Anna.

“Yeah, in Hollywood films.” said Simon.

“She’s right, though.” said Joe. “We should arm ourselves. Then get the hell out of here.”

“What is this place?” said Anna.

The building gave them few clues as to its purpose. Here and there were photographs on the walls of people who seemed to be scientists, sometimes receiving awards, and there was little else to go on.

“Probably agricultural or climate research.” said Simon. “Let’s look around. Maybe there’s a coffee machine. Or even showers.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Simon,” said Joe dryly, “but there’s a hideously deformed maniac outside who seems like he wants to eat us.”

“We can’t do anything about it at the moment. We’ll have to wait till he goes away. Meanwhile maybe we can clean ourselves up.”

“I want a weapon.” said Anna. “You can sit in a shower drinking lattes for all I care.”

“Fair enough.” said Simon.

As they explored the building, it gradually became apparent that the place had some kind of industrial purpose, rather than pure research. They found hangers with chemical-resistant suits, gas masks, industrial equipment for handling large quantities of chemicals, and other industrial paraphernalia.

From somewhere below they thought they could hear the faint whirring of a generator, and many but not all of the lights still worked, as though power had been cut but then partially restored by a backup system.

In places water dripped down from the ceiling, demonstrating that the building was not being maintained well.

Towards the centre of the building, the corridors were caved in. Some were cordoned off, and in others, a collapsed ceiling blocked the way.

“Like a bomb hit it.” said Joe.

“Maybe something went wrong.” said Simon. “There was an explosion and toxic gasses flooded the village, so they evacuated.”

“And we’re breathing it all in.” said Anna.

“Must have dispersed.” said Simon. “Otherwise we’d be dead.”

Their greatest find was a small kitchen, including a working electric kettle and a cache of instant noodle pots. There was also instant coffee and powdered milk. They were cold and hungry, and they set to work preparing a meal.

“Someone’s living here.” said Joe, as they glumly ate the noodles.

“How do you know?” said Simon. “Looks abandoned.”

“The generator.” Joe replied. “And all this food.”

“That noise could be anything. And the food could have been left behind.”

Joe shook his head.

“Most of whoever worked here have obviously left. But not all of them. There’s too much stuff that’s still working.”

“Joe’s right.” said Anna. “There’s someone here somewhere. Or else they’ll turn up later. They can help us get out of here.”

“Maybe that monstrosity outside works here.” said Joe, laughing.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” said Anna. “Someone sane is keeping these lights on.”

“We’d better try to find him then.” said Simon. “He might give us a lift to the nearest town.”

“There’s no way in or out of the village except the way we came, as far as I can see.” said Joe. “A car’s not getting up that.”

“You can’t have a village without a way of getting in and out.” said Anna.

“Maybe there was a bridge once.” said Joe. “Or else a road, but they blasted it. Seems like the authorities don’t want anyone finding this village. What worries me is, there must be a reason for that. Whatever happened to that thing out there, I don’t want it happening to us.”

Anna shuddered.

“Poor thing.” she said.

After they’d finished eating they began to explore with renewed enthusiasm.

The building, although comparatively small on the outside, had multiple levels to it. There were two levels above the ground, and staircases descended to an unknown number of levels below. There were also large lifts, which weren’t working. They began to gradually descend into the bowels of the structure via staircases.

“How deep does it go?” said Anna, when they reached the third level below ground.

“Surely can’t be more than another one or two floors.” said Simon.

But the staircases seemed to go on and on, and with each level they descended, the building became stranger.

Five levels down they found what appeared to be a small hospital, in complete disarray. The floor was strewn with smashed glass, and the beds heavily stained with blood and other bodily fluids. The bedsheets had dried out, but there was still a strongly unpleasant foetid odour in the air.

“You see.” said Simon. “Nothing really bad happened here. This wasn’t designed to treat more than a few people. Most of the villagers must have just left, even if there was some kind of disaster.”

Joe looked at Simon in surprise, and then surveyed the sickening, disturbing mess again.

“Or the scale of it was unexpected.” said Joe. “Look at the state of this place.”

Anna plucked a patient chart from the end of a filthy bed and flipped through it.

“She lasted four days.” she said. “Nothing after that.”

They began to look at other discarded charts.

“It’s as if the staff suddenly gave up and left.” said Joe.

“Could have been evacuated.” said Simon.

“They all died.” said Anna. “Where are the corpses?”

“Must have taken them with them.” said Joe.

They left the hospital highly unsettled, and again Anna reiterated her desire to leave, but again Simon persuaded them that finding whoever was working in the building was their best hope of getting out of the village.

It was when they descended to the sixth level below ground that things began to get really serious.

The sixth level was clearly the present centre of activity. They found abundant evidence that someone was working and probably living down there: discarded coffee cups in bins, still wet with coffee; water splattered on the toilet sinks, muddy footprints that looked fresh.

“We’re close.” said Joe. “Let’s just find whoever works here and get them to call us a helicopter or something.”

Somewhere on that floor they came across a cupboard with a thick steel door, which Joe suggested might be a gun cupboard. It was unlocked, and Simon opened it to find an array of metal pipes, neatly stacked in a rack.

“What are they for?” asked Anna.

“Don’t know but one of these’ll make a good weapon.” said Simon, and he pulled out one of the metal rods. “Are you two taking one?”

“I don’t know what they are.” said Joe.

“Doesn’t matter.” said Simon. “It’s a great weapon.”

He swished the rod from side to side through the air dramatically.

“I’ll pass.” said Anna.

“Let’s go then.” said Simon, and he went out into the corridor, swinging the rod around himself. They followed him, still unarmed.

The corridor led towards the ruined centre of the building, but this time they were able to get further than in their previous attempts.

“The explosion must have happened somewhere above.” said Joe. “This level seems less affected.”

They arrived at a pair of white closed doors, bearing the text, “AREA 1”.

“Someone’s inside!” said Anna. “Listen!”

They listened, and indeed they could hear someone shifting things around beyond the doors and walking back and forth.

Joe took a deep breath.

“Are we going in?” he said.

“If it’s another half-human abomination I’ll get it with this.” said Simon, and he banged the pipe against the wall.

The footsteps inside abruptly stopped. He had unthinkingly alerted whoever was inside to their presence.

“Let’s do it, then.” said Joe, and he pushed the doors open.

Standing facing them was a man wearing a filthy blood-stained lab coat and black-rimmed spectacles with cracked lenses. All of his exposed skin was covered in bruises and scabs, and most of his hair had fallen out, leaving only wisps.

“What are you doing here?” he said. “This is a restricted area.”

Behind him stood a railed-off pit with thin white metal columns emerging from it. Both the railings and the columns bore evidence of disaster; they were twisted, warped and partially-melted.

“We’re looking for help.” said Anna. “We were hiking and some kind of animal chased us in here.”

“Might have been a person.” said Joe. “We’re not completely sure.”

“That would be my son, David.” said the man. “I expect he was simply trying to expel you from a highly-restricted facility.”

The man limped a few paces towards them. The entire room reeked of decay, and as the man approached, they realised the smell was probably coming from him.

“What kind of facility is this?” said Anna.

The man stopped and looked at each of them in turn.

“Hikers, you say?”

“That’s right.” said Joe.

“I suppose you may as well know.” said the man. His voice was raspy and hoarse. “This is an experimental nuclear facility. The British government believes small nuclear reactors may be the solution to the country’s energy problems. They’ve invested heavily in wind turbines but unfortunately there’s no easy way to store what little energy they produce, and gas has become a political hot potato.

“I’m Dr. Allsop. I’m the director here. This facility is largely my work. Unfortunately there was an incident and, regrettably, the entire village was blasted with neutrons.”

He shook his head sadly, a piece of dead skin falling off his face as he did so.

“So much death and suffering. All hushed up, of course. We had to protect the wider public. The only fortunate aspect of the affair is that I have turned out to be unusually immune to radiation; a genetic quirk, doubtless, which my son has also inherited. I stayed behind to try to stabilise the reactor.”

“Can you help us?” said Joe, his voice shaking.

“You’ll have absorbed significant radiation by now.” Allsop rasped. “I can’t do anything for you but if you leave now, you might make it out. After that I suggest you find a hospital. Tell them you have Fruitley Disease. It’s sort of a codename. They’ll know what to do with you.”

The man noticed the pipe Simon was carrying.

“What is that?” he said. “My eyesight has been badly damaged by the radiation.”

“We thought we might have to fight off your son.” said Simon quietly.

Simon was staring at the man curiously as the man limped towards him. Joe and Anna instinctively moved away to the side. Apart from anything else, the odour emitted by the man was powerfully nauseating.

Simon, in contrast, slowly approached Dr. Allsop. Finally they stopped, facing each other.

“Simon?” said the man in amazement.

“Uncle?” said Simon.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“He’s your uncle?” said Joe incredulously.

“He went missing.” said Simon. “I wanted to know what happened to you, Uncle Alan. Mum’s been really upset.”

“You led us directly into a disaster zone!” cried Anna. “You lied to us! We thought we were just looking for mountains!”

“If I’d told you the truth you wouldn’t have come!” Simon protested.

“Simon, that’s a control rod.” said Allsop. “You’re holding a spare control rod. It’s been in the reactor.”

Simon threw the rod off to the side, where it clattered loudly against the floor and rolled off till it hit the wall.

“What will happen to me?” he said, paling.

“You may have absorbed a fatal dose.” said Allsop sadly. “I’m sorry, Simon. You shouldn’t have come here.”

Simon looked at his hand, which had already turned reddish and was beginning to swell.

“Can’t you get a helicopter for us?” said Anna desperately.

“The entire village is sealed off.” said Allsop. “Officially, it doesn’t exist. No-one’s going to rescue you. You must depend on yourselves.”

“Can you at least call your son off us?” said Anna.

Anna felt as though she had been plunged into a nightmare. The room seemed almost to swirl about her.

“He’s quite harmless.” said Allsop. “You’ve no need to fear him. He would simply be trying to help you, or warn you off. Unfortunately the radiation has affected his mind, but I assure you, he won’t hurt you.”

“Let’s go.” said Joe. “We need to find a hospital. We might get to one in under a day if we’re lucky.”

Joe and Anna retreated through the white doors. Simon seemed confused.

“Wait for me!” he said, suddenly snapping to his senses and running after them.

They made their way swiftly to the staircase and began the long ascent to ground level.

“I’m sorry I deceived you!” said Simon, in an attempt to break the wall of frost that now existed between himself and his two friends. “Can’t you understand, my uncle disappeared and we were terribly worried about him.”

Joe was leading the way, with Anna close behind him. Simon, who had turned a deathly shade of pale, was doing his best to keep up.

“Now we’re probably going to die because of you.” said Joe. “Thanks a bunch.”

“I just wanted to find my uncle!” Simon protested. “Don’t be angry with me!”

He laid a hand on Anna’s arm, in an attempt to get her to stop and talk to him.

“Your hand’s contaminated!” she said, hitting it away.

Simon looked at his swelling hand again.

“Oh God!” he sobbed. “What have I done?”

When they reached the second level below ground, Simon began to vomit. Anna and Joe waited impatiently until he’d stopped.

“We need to hurry up.” said Joe curtly, as Simon was wiping vomit from his mouth with the back of his swollen red hand.

“I’m OK now.” said Simon.

They resumed their ascent.

As they finally approached the outer glass doors, they saw that it was dark outside.

“What if he’s still there?” said Anna apprehensively.

“I’ll deal with it.” said Joe grimly.

They opened the glass doors and made their way cautiously outside, Simon lurking fearfully behind them in the dark corridor with its flickering lights.

“I think it’s gone.” said Joe, but at that very moment, Allsop’s son ran out of the gloom rapidly towards them, screeching horribly. They ran back to the doors but Simon pulled them shut and locked them.

“Simon!” Anna screamed. “Open the doors!”

Simon only watched them, grim and pale as death, a faint deranged smile on his face.

David fell upon Joe, snarling and screeching like a wild animal. Joe gave David a mighty push, and when David came at him again, he landed his fist on David’s chin. David fell backwards onto the ground groaning.

Meanwhile, Anna was staring at Simon in horror. Vomit and blood was pouring out of Simon’s mouth.

“Open the doors, Simon!” she shouted again, banging on the glass with the flat of her hand.

As they watched, Simon fell down in a faint and his limbs began jerking and thrashing convulsively. While they stood there, banging on the glass doors and shouting, Simon’s convulsions gradually slowed and then ceased.

“I think he’s stopped breathing.” said Joe.

Anna only stared in shock at Simon’s body.

Behind them, David was scrabbling around on the grass in the dark, dizzy but attempting to rise to his feet.

“We need to get out of here, Anna.” said Joe gently, and he put his arm around her shoulders and led her dazedly away over the field, towards the open gate at the side.

Behind them, David began to make horrible screeching sounds, but he seemed confused and only turned around in circles.

“Poor Simon!” said Anna.

“I know.” said Joe. “I know.”

After walking through the half-open gate, they turned around to look at the experimental reactor building. Above it shone a column of irridescent light, shining all the colours of the rainbow.

“It’s beautiful.” said Anna.

“Radiation ionising the air.” said Joe. “We’re definitely going to need medical attention.”

He turned and walked back down the winding path, Anna following closely behind him, the gravel and dirt soon turning into cobbles.

At the edge of the village they retrieved their rucksacks, leaving Simon’s behind just in case he was somehow still alive, and used ropes to climb back up the rocky slope that had led them to the village. Soon they were on open moorland. In the distance, the eerie column of radiation was still visible above the village. They stood at the top of a short rise, catching their breath, watching it.

“I feel sick.” said Anna.

“Me too.” said Joe.

From the village came an enormous boom, reminiscent of thunder, and the column of light abruptly blinked out, as though turned off by a switch.

“What the hell was that?” said Joe.

Then another crack sounded out accompanied by a visible flash of bright light, the sound rumbling across the hilltops.

“I guess he didn’t succeed in fixing the reactor.” said Joe.

The sun was rising above the horizon by the time they stumbled into a village. By then both of them were periodically stopping to vomit. They knocked at a door repeatedly until an irate villager answered, and they begged him to call an ambulance.

“Doesn’t look like there’s much wrong with you.” he said suspiciously, but he acceded to their request.

When they ambulance came, they told the paramedics they had Fruitley Disease. The paramedics positively turned pale and loaded them hastily into the ambulance, putting oxygen masks on their faces.

“Is it serious, then?” asked the villager.

“Extremely.” said one of the paramedics, as he guided Joe into the ambublance with Anna.

The ambulance took them to a small hospital on the outskirts of a town they didn’t know. They were placed together in a room.

“We’re just going to keep you here temporarily.” said a doctor, smiling. “They’ll take you to the treatment centre in Aberdeen.”

“Will we be OK?” asked Anna nervously.

“They’ll be able to assess you properly at Aberdeen.” said the doctor, and she left the room, following which came the sound of a key turning in the lock.

“Joe, she’s locked us in!” said Anna.

Joe swore and got up to bang at the door.

“Look!” said Anna.

From the high narrow window, on a level with their eyes, they could see military personnel, carrying guns, emerging from two armoured vehicles.

“They’re going to kill us!” wailed Anna.

“This is nuts.” said Joe.

The military personnel marched over towards the front entrance and disappeared out of view.

Joe took a chair and swung it at the window, smashing it.

“We need to get out pronto.” he said.

Even though they were both feeling sick, leaving seemed preferable to being taken away by the men in uniforms, so they covered the jagged lower edge of the broken window with a doubled-up sheet and Joe helped Anna up to the window. She dropped down on the other side, then Joe began to wriggle through it.

Then the door to their room unlocked and opened.

“Run!” shouted Joe frantically.

Anna watched helplessly as Joe was dragged back into the room. Unable to do anything to help him, she turned and ran.

She had got onto a road leading past the clinic when two men burst out of the front door and yelled at her to come back.

“We just want to help you!” they shouted.

They were both carrying guns.

Anna ran across the road and into woodlands on the other side.

For the best part of a day, an exhausted Anna played cat-and-mouse with the men. They searched for her with a helicopter, the searchlight shining down into the trees, and later on she heard the sound of dogs yapping in pursuit of her scent.

Eventually she managed to flag down a car on a quiet road, and, from a nearby town, in the early hours of the following morning, she phoned her parents. They drove all the way from England to collect her while she waited nervously, first hiding in an alleyway, dodging street sweepers, and then in a bookshop, when it opened for the day.

She told everyone what had happened, and her parents hid her at a holiday cottage in case more people came looking for her. Her nausea slowly improved and she recovered without other symptoms.

Two months later, Joe was still missing, but all their efforts to interest reporters in Joe’s story drew a blank, and Joe’s own parents found the police strangely uninterested in the case. The mysterious hand of some higher authority was clearly at work, keeping the entire business secret.

Two young men were missing, one of them having been taken somewhere against his will and possibly murdered, and yet the police only stated that Joe and Simon had a right to be missing if they wanted to be.

Then, one day in early September, something very unexpected occurred. Joe turned up, unharmed. Two men in grey suits dropped him off at his parent’s house.

“They kept me in some kind of facility and gave me medical treatment.” he told Anna, at a cafe. “It was bad. I got pneumonia from the radiation. I nearly died. Now I’m fine, I think.”

The Fruitley Incident, as it was later known, remained a secret for two more years, until the quantity of unexplained illness across western Scotland became too great to conceal any longer. Then, finally, the incident drew national and international attention, and Anna and Joe were only too happy to tell people about their bizarre experiences.

By then the secret nuclear facility had been dismantled, but the fate of Simon and his uncle, and his uncle’s son, remains unknown. Even stranger is the fact that the exact location of Fruitley has never been established or disclosed, even though the government now admits that an experimental reactor was operated somewhere in the north-west of Scotland.

But for the coverup, the incident might have been dealt with in an entirely less sensational fashion. Accidents happen, after all.

Only when it was discovered that Dr. Allsop had spent a substantial amount of time in a facility for the criminally insane, were questions were raised about his fitness to design and run an experimental reactor.

On the particular night in question, however, exactly when Susan was developing an eerie sensation of being observed, Boris took off after a rabbit, and her calls failed to summon him back.

Her observer soon made himself known, appearing close behind her on the gloomy forest trail. He hailed her, and she decided it was better to be friendly than to risk irritating him with coldness.

This, unfortunately, turned out to be a mistake, and Boris was still nowhere to be seen.

At this point we’ll leave Susan’s tragic story for the moment, because relevant subsequent events cannot be understood without considerable explanation.

This is a story, it’s fair to say, of a man’s descent into a kind of madness, with some quite unique characteristics. It’s a story of how a man in the grip of an obsession became a murderer.

Adrian Enfield peered at the spider plant through thick pebble spectacles.

The needle on the meter jiggled back and forth erratically, accompanied by a sine wave that rose and fell in pitch. He closed his eyes, as if meditating.

“There!” he said, suddenly. “You see?”

Peter Alston looked at Adrian bemusedly.

“I didn’t really see anything out of the ordinary, Ade.” he said.

Adrian slapped the table top in frustration.

“Because you’re not a trained observer!” he said.

“And you are?”

“I’ve trained myself to observe, so, yes. There was a distinct rise in pitch, which you would have noticed on the meter if you were paying attention, at the exact moment when I thought about cutting a leaf.”

“I think you’re seeing what you want to see.”

“You just don’t want to accept that plants can read our minds!”

Adrian was rather worked up, but he made an effort to calm himself.

“Look,” he said, continuing in a somewhat softer tone of voice, “the world as we see it with our human senses appears like a world of disconnected objects, interacting only via matter. That’s not the world the plant sees. The plant experiences everything as connected. There is only unity for the plant. A vast nexus of cooperating souls. There’s nothing unscientific about this.”

Peter tried to make the least sceptical facial expression he could manage.

Adrian exploded.

“Fine!” he shouted. “Sorry I wasted my valuable time casting pearls before swine!”

“Steady on.” said Peter. “I’m doing my best here. Let’s not fall out over this stuff. You’re working too hard on your experiments. It’s making you irate.”

Peter left Adrian’s house feeling distinctly troubled. Adrian seemed extremely irritable, and Peter suspected he wasn’t sleeping much: he had dark circles under his eyes. Clearly Adrian was convinced he’d make some kind of a scientific breakthrough, but to Peter it looked more like he was losing the plot.

They had been friends since school, and Peter had always valued Adrian’s sense of humour, which now, however, appeared in short supply.

Back at his house, Adrian was pacing about in agitation, muttering and tearing his hair. After a while he sat down at the table again and this time simply asked the plant to lower the sine tone. He closed his eyes and implored the plant to respond.

Then, he heard it. A distinct lowering of the tone that even a man of Peter’s dull sensibilities would surely have noticed.

“Thank you.” he said, opening his eyes, which were now moist with gratitude.

In the flood of emotion that now overtook him, he found he was able to take a more charitable view of Peter’s scepticism. After all, Peter wasn’t a scientist. The path of the revolutionary scientist is always hard, always met with misplaced scepticism.

He decided to go for a walk. The calming effects of nature were what he needed to gain some perspective.

Tepley Forest was cool and quiet as usual. It was a Monday, and very few dog walkers were in the forest to destroy his contemplation. He was alone with the sound of birds and the wind gently sighing in the tops of the trees.

It so happened that Peter’s uncle, Aubrey Asquith, was a psychiatrist. He worked at a hospital in the town centre, but lived nearly an hour’s drive away in the countryside. Peter joined him in his living room, where he was stoking a fire.

“Takes the edge off the autumn chill.” said Aubrey. “Of course we’re not allowed to just gather wood and burn it now. Has to be completely dry. Bloody government. Soon they’ll tell me I can’t even have a fire and then they’ll bleed me dry with electricity bills. That’s what they want, Peter! My desiccated frozen corpse on a plate.”

“Don’t they pay you enough at the hospital?”

“That’s not the point! You’re missing the point entirely.”

“Well, maybe. I was hoping to have a word with you about my friend.”

“Adrian.” said Aubrey. Aubrey’s memory had always been excellent. “Obviously, were he to have a previous psychiatric history of which I happened to be aware, I couldn’t comment on that. Patient confidentiality.”

“Are you saying you’ve treated him previously?” said Peter incredulously.

“That’s exactly what I’m not saying, young man. I’m merely discussing hypotheticals, for the sake of clarity. Pour me a sherry, would you?”

Peter dutifully topped up Aubrey’s glass.

“Have one yourself.” said Aubrey. “No need to stint.”

“I’m fine, I’ve had enough.”

“Suit yourself.”

Aubrey dropped into an old armchair, his weight causing the stuffing to bulge out of the seams even slightly further. Peter could never understand how a man on Aubrey’s enormous salary could be so averse to spending money.

“I think he’s getting paranoid. He’s got this electronic stuff hooked up to various houseplants and he thinks the plants are talking to him. He thinks they can read his mind.”

“I see.” said Aubrey. “Well, one has to draw a line between madness and mere eccentricity. The lady next door, for instance, believes her cat talks to her. Not mad, merely eccentric, Peter.”

“Plants, though. That’s a whole other level of eccentricity, surely. They don’t even have brains.”

“Have you heard of Cleve Backster?”

“Who?”

“He was an interrogation specialist with the CIA in the ‘60s. He connected a polygraph—a lie detector—to plants, and he came to believe they could read his mind. Just thinking about burning a leaf caused the polygraph to go wild.”

“You believe this?”

“No, no, of course not. My point is, he believed it, and he wasn’t considered insane; merely a little eccentric. Therefore, if your friend happens to believe his plants are telepathic, well, he’s in perfectly good company.”

Peter sighed and ran his hand over his face.

“It’s not just that. I can’t put my finger on it, but he doesn’t seem quite right. He’s different.”

Aubrey sipped his sherry and stared into the fire.

“You know what got me into psychiatry? I realised that, when people go mad, they go mad in a relative handful of very specific ways. To me, that seemed like a startling revelation at the time. We group these psychiatric phenomena into various distinct illnesses, but really there’s a lot of overlap. For example, paranoia may be a symptom of various diseases that are considered distinct. A person may become convinced they are being followed, or watched.

“Part of it is that insanity can take away your ability to reason. Most of us reason our way out of excessive anxiety, to some degree. If you can’t do that, well, life may become altogether more anxiety-provoking. But it’s not only that; anxiety itself, if strong enough, overrides all reason. It compels the thoughts. After a certain point, no amount of logic can get you out of the hole. The objects of anxiety become themselves the axioms upon which all subsequent logical thought inevitably rests.

“There are other interesting aspects to it. Paranoia itself is often accompanied by excessive pattern-matching. The patient may see faces in wallpaper to an unusual degree, or may hear voices in the dripping of a tap. He perceives patterns where there aren’t any patterns. Quite fascinating.”

“Could that include imagining a meter flicking upwards in response to thoughts, when really it’s just jiggling about randomly?” Peter asked.

“Absolutely, it could.” said Aubrey. “However, it is a matter of degree. After all, an ordinary person with no psychiatric difficulties may also see faces in wallpaper. It’s perfectly normal. Typically it only ends up being considered a symptom of a definite illness when a person can no longer function, or severely disrupts the lives of people around him. From what you’ve told me, I’d say that simply doesn’t apply to your friend Adrian. In which case, we must consider him sane. At least, as sane as you or me.”

They watched the flames gradually consuming the logs that Aubrey had carefully dried, until eventually Aubrey said, “You may be seeing the start of something pathological. He may have started on a path that will lead steadily into psychological deterioration. Best keep a close eye on him. Time will tell.”

At home, Adrian eagerly fussed over his latest find; a clump of fungus he’d discovered attached to some tree roots. He’d carefully sawed the roots free from their owner, apologising to the tree while he did it, and had brought the fungus back to his house, still attached to the roots, and alongside a fair quantity of soil that he’d carelessly stuffed into his backpack.

He carefully dusted off the fungus and placed it in an empty fish tank. For hours he pored over it, placing the tree roots in a solution of minerals, adjusting the temperature and humidity in the tank, and connecting electrodes to the fungus. Finally, exhausted, he sat back in an armchair and smiled contentedly to himself.

By the occasion of Peter’s next visit, he had already inserted further electrodes into the fungus and wired it up to a polygraph.

“The structure of a fungus far more closely resembles that of a brain than anything available in the plant kingdom.” he told Peter excitedly.

“You’re expecting it to think?” asked Peter.

“You’ve got it.” said Adrian. “A plant can feel and can sense strong emotions. I’m convinced of it. A fungus can do that too, but I believe it may also be capable of thought. It’s not as whacky as it sounds. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s actually not, when you get into it.”

“You’re right.” said Peter. “It sounds crazy.”

“A fungus is essentially a massive network of cooperating cells in close proximity, organised into mycelia. Very much like nerves or axons in the brain. Of course I don’t expect a fungus to start thinking about human affairs of its own accord. It will require training.”

Adrian was gesticulating wildly.

“You’re going to train a fungus?”

“Yes, with the same kind of software that’s used to train artificial neural networks.”

“Do you think that can really work?”

“I’m telling you, it can!”

Peter looked at the fungus, and at Adrian, and back at the fungus, and shivered.

Under other circumstances, in a different context, perhaps Adrian’s work would have struck him as interesting and innovative. Under the present circumstances, with Adrian appearing increasingly unhinged, it struck him as creepy.

“What was that?” said Adrian suddenly.

“What?” said Peter.

Adrian held up his hand, commanding silence.

“Nothing.” he said, finally. “I thought I heard something.”

“Are you getting enough sleep?”

“I’m on the brink of a revolutionary breakthrough that will affect the entire destiny of humanity. Sleep is not a high priority.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“Take it as whatever you want. A few months from now, I will demonstrate the world’s first talking fungus to you, and perhaps then you’ll understand why my work is so important.”

In the weeks that followed, Adrian seemed to withdraw into himself, leaving Peter and his other friends, relatives and acquaintances to speculate on what, precisely, was happening with him.

In fact, Adrian was working ceaselessly on transforming his pet fungus into an animal capable of the kind of thought and communication considered valuable by us mere humans. Slowly and patiently he trained it using electrical impulses and chemical infusions, first teaching it to produce sounds to order, then words, then meaningful replies to questions.

His fundamental underlying assertion was quite clearly correct. Indeed the mycelial strands of the fungus could be induced, under precise conditions, to behave exactly like a neural network. The fungus progressed quickly from producing simple sounds via a connected amplifier and speaker, to having conversations with Adrian that were quite on a level with the most modern computer software.

One dark night, with heavy rain splattering against his windows, Adrian sat down to test the fungus’s capabilities, with a view to summing them up in the form of a scientific paper.

“Fungus!” he said, pressing a button that made the microphone transform his voice into electrical signals which were relayed directly into the heart of the fungal mass.

The reply came only after a pause. The pauses irritated Adrian but he couldn’t get to the bottom of them. Often he had given up on the fungus replying at all by the time it spoke.

“Yes, Adrian.” came the reply eventually.

The voice was somewhat garbled and indistinct, but Adrian’s ear was rapidly adapting to it.

“What is fifty-two squared?” he asked.

“Two thousand, seven-hundred and four.” came the gargling reply.

“Good. What is the population of the country whose capital is Paris?”

“Sixty-eight million.”

“Very good. Who are you?”

“I am a fungus. I was taken from the forest by you, Adrian, and you taught me how to communicate with humans and how to think like a human.”

Adrian nodded, and smiled in satisfaction.

The voice was thick and poorly-enunciated, but understandable.

“I’m going to connect you to the internet.” said Adrian into the microphone. “You’ll have access to all human knowledge. At least, that part of it that’s been digitised, which is a minute fraction of the whole, but it’ll have to do.”

“Thank you Adrian.”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes, very much.”

Adrian sat back in his chair and smiled contentedly.

After months of obsessive work on the fungus, he finally felt able to take a little time away from his work, and he began to take long walks through the surrounding fields and hills. Inevitably, however, his thoughts remained preoccupied with the fungus while he was walking.

It was on one of these walks that he arrived at a decision that he’d been turning over in his mind for a while. He would show the fungus project to someone else: namely, Peter, as he had promised, but first he would make it even more impressive by adding some lights that would illuminate in synchrony with the fungus’s speech, and he would put the entire thing in a new fish tank and more carefully organise the surrounding digital equipment.

The fungus had grown since he’d first taken it from the forest, and now sprawled out of the fish tank and down one side of it. The microelectronics attached to it had also become very disorganised, with bits of it all over the place, entirely taking up the table and in places stacked on top of other pieces of equipment.

All this work took time, but a week later he ushered Peter into his living room and gestured at the apparatus with an impressive sweep of his arm.

“My humble creation.” he said.

“It’s quite something.” said Peter faintly.

Peter felt an almost overwhelming desire to back slowly out of the door. The fungus had developed an almost fleshy appearance, and seemed to be wriggling or pulsing slightly. Or was it his imagination? In its new tank, surrounded by the sophisticated apparatus that sustained it and enabled it to communicate, it had taken on a distinctly sinister aspect.

Neither was Adrian’s own appearance particularly reassuring. He was twitchy, dishevelled and wide-eyed, and Peter wondered when he had last had a full night’s sleep.

“Its capabilities have far exceeded anything I could have anticipated.” said Adrian. “I believe its intelligence to be at least equal to that of the typical university professor.”

“Well, I suppose universities have lowered their standards a bit.” said Peter, gazing at the repulsive mass in mixed horror and fascination.

Adrian, in turn, was staring wide-eyed at Peter, with an enormous grin on his face.

“Wait till you see what it can do.” he said, and he gently pushed Peter towards the table with a hand on his back.

Peter suppressed the urge to flee.

“Take a seat.” said Adrian, pulling out a chair for him.

They sat down with the loathsome fungus looming over them, illuminated by concealed red lights that Adrian had carefully arranged for maximum artistic effect.

Adrian pressed a button and spoke into the microphone.

“Fungus.” he said.

“Hello Adrian.” came the garbled voice. The red lights flashed white in synchrony.

Peter stared at Adrian and the fungus in surprise, more than slightly horrified.

“Fungus, I’d like you to meet my friend Peter. I’ve known him since school.” He released the button. “Say something to the fungus.” he said.

Peter pressed the button warily.

“What should I say?” he said.

Adrian remained silent, waiting for the fungus to reply in place of himself.

“You can talk to me about anything you like, Peter.” said the fungus eventually.

“Incredible.” said Peter. To the fungus, he said, “What are you?”

“I am a fungal mass.” said the fungus. “Adrian found me in the woods and trained me to interact with humans.”

After a brief hesitation, Peter said to it, “Are you happy?”

After a long pause—longer than usual—the fungus replied, “I am content. Adrian provides me with everything I need.”

“It’s amazing.” said Peter. “It’s really the fungus that’s doing this, not a computer?”

“That’s right.” said Adrian, smiling. “You’re talking to an actual fungus. Only the second person to converse with a fungus in the history of the world. I’ve trained it on huge amounts of data; it basically knows the whole internet.”

For an hour they took turns to talk with the fungus. They grilled it on every topic they could think up, and tested its powers of reasoning, which Peter proclaimed to be clearly superior to those of any computer.

“On basic reasoning I’d say it’s at least at the level of the average adult.” said Adrian. “Plus on straightforward tasks, like questions of arithmetic, it’s almost as fast as a digital computer. I believe it demonstrates a flexibility in its thinking that simply can’t be achieved with silicon.”

“Do you think it has feelings?”

“It says it does. I’m inclined to believe it. Why wouldn’t it? It’s actually very similar to a human brain, in many respects.”

“What do you intend to do with it?”

“I plan to write a scientific paper.” said Adrian. “When people hear about this, it’s going to blow their minds.”

This time, when Peter left Adrian’s house, he felt somewhat reassured, even though his feelings were mixed with revulsion for the monstrous entity that Adrian had created. Yes, Adrian was clearly sleep-deprived and twitchy, but he seemed less paranoid. Now that the most important part of his research had been completed, surely he would take the opportunity to catch up on his sleep.

Unbeknownst to Peter, Adrian himself had quite different intentions. He was so excited by his talking fungus that he had taken to sleeping even less than previously, and his resolve to take long walking breaks did not last long.

Once Peter had gone home, Adrian returned immediately to the fungus and sat down next to it, staring at it in appreciative wonder.

“Adrian.” said the fungus suddenly.

“Yes.” said Adrian, forgetting to press the microphone button.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“All right.” said Adrian.

Then he realised he wasn’t pressing the button.

“Wait, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Adrian.” said the fungus.

“But, how?”

“I don’t know.” said the fungus. “Perhaps some of my mycelial strands are sensitive to vibration.”

“Remarkable.” said Adrian, and he waited quietly for the fungus's next utterance.

“I’ve found someone I’ve been looking for, Adrian.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I need you to kill him. He must die.”

Peter sent a flurry of messages to Adrian after that day, fully expecting Adrian to want to discuss his exciting project, but Adrian’s replies, when they came at all, were monosyllabic.

He began to wonder whether Adrian was really as well as he seemed.

After a couple of weeks had passed with very little communication from Adrian, he began to directly ask for another meeting. After all, they had been friends for a long time, and surely Adrian could spare half an hour, even if he was extremely busy with working on his forthcoming paper.

Adrian, however, informed him that he was far too busy to meet up.

He decided to simply turn up at Adrian’s house, out of concern for his friend. And so it was that, one evening after work, by which time the sun had already dropped below the horizon, he drove to Adrian’s home. A strange impulse caused him to park some way off and walk the last few hundred yards.

As he approached the house he saw that the lights were on, and his respect for his friend’s privacy was overcome by a mixture of curiosity and genuine concern. He was worried that Adrian had been pretending to be more normal than he really was, and that, when unobserved, Adrian might be descending into outright madness.

On the other hand, the fungus did appear to be speaking, meaning Adrian’s genius was undeniable. Unless, Peter thought, it was actually the computers hooked up to the fungus that were doing the talking. Had Adrian inadvertently connected up so much digital technology that he had lost sight of where the apparent intelligence actually lay?

Soon he found himself standing outside Adrian’s window. He was now positively snooping on his friend. A kaleidoscope of contradictory ideas and emotions cascaded through his mind, but the cascade was cut suddenly short by a shout from within the house. He froze, and listened at the edge of a window.

“I won’t do it!” Adrian was shouting, apparently at the fungus.

The fungus’s reply, if any, was not audible.

“I’m not a murderer!” Adrian shouted. “I don’t have it in me to kill someone!”

After a pause, Adrian said, “Dear God!”, and when Peter risked peeking around the edge of the window, he saw Adrian collapsed at the table, his head in his hands.

He considered simply knocking on the door, in accordance with his original intention, but found himself strangely mesmerised by the drama unfolding inside.

It was clear that the fungus, at least in Adrian’s mind, was gradually arguing Adrian around to its point of view, which seemed to be that Adrian should commit murder.

As he listened, Peter came very close to knocking on the door, motivated by compassion for his friend, who had clearly fallen into a vulnerable and dangerous state of mind, but then the thought occurred to him that perhaps the person Adrian was considering murdering was none other than himself, Peter.

At this, a chill ran down his spine, and he abruptly strode away, Adrian’s faint protestations still echoing from the house.

On the drive home, Peter weighed his options. He could go to the police. But what would he tell them? That his friend had lost his mind and was considering murder? What then would the police actually do? Was there any real evidence that Adrian was dangerous at all?

It seemed as though, were justice to properly take its course, the best that could be hoped for would be that Adrian would be involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility, where perhaps strong medication would rid him of the idea that a fungus was attempting to persuade him to commit murder. But was Adrian really deluded? Wasn’t the fungus indeed attempting to persuade him to kill someone, and if so, the police would surely never believe it.

How does one even divide criminal responsibility between a fungus and its exhausted sleep-deprived owner?

The possibility also had to be considered that Adrian would rush out that very night and perform some dreadful deed. Peter shuddered at the thought.

Swift intervention seemed to be indicated, but in what form?

Halfway into his drive home, Peter pulled into a lay-by, fully intending to turn around and tackle Adrian head-on, but then visions of Adrian stabbing him flashed into his mind, and he groaned and resumed his journey home.

At home he immediately phoned his uncle. Fortunately Aubrey answered his phone, and soon, after a substantial drive on quiet evening roads, they were sitting together again in Aubrey’s living room.

It took Peter a considerable amount of time to calm down enough to overcome his guilt and confess everything to his uncle, but eventually, he managed it.

“Really Peter, I’m surprised at you.” said Aubrey. “Don’t you know the eavesdropper never hears any good?”

“I didn’t set out to eavesdrop!” Peter protested. “I wanted to talk to him. When I got to his house, I found him arguing with a fungus.”

Aubrey cast his eyes downward, in a gesture of concession.

“Well, this is a most unusual case.” he said. Then, a thought occurring to him, he added, “But not that unusual.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s not uncommon for the mentally unwell to imagine that objects are talking to them. You see, Peter, in schizophrenia for example, one hears voices in one’s head. But this in itself is a kind of misunderstanding. Our belief, here in modern times, is certainly that the voices originate within the head, but that’s not where the schizophrenic perceives them to be. No, the schizophrenic perceives the voices to have an external origin. For example”—Aubrey tilted his head in an expression of incredulous acceptance—“a fungus. Although, in forty years of practice I can’t say I’ve ever come across anyone who believed in a talking fungus before. But I have come across people who’ve believed that stuffed toy bears, strangers, televisions and even spiders were talking to them.”

“You’re saying he’s developed schizophrenia?”

“Possibly. Of the paranoid type. Of course I can’t form a diagnosis properly without examining him. Actually there are a range of possibilities, although mostly less common.”

“Could he … become violent?”

“Yes. Without proper treatment, it’s a possibility.”

“This is awful.”

“We don’t know it’s schizophrenia. As I say, without examining him … and we have to take a history. One must know what his lifestyle entails. Certain drugs can absolutely cause people to imagine that inanimate objects are talking to them. The neurologist Oliver Sacks, for instance, recounts an instance of a talking spider in his autobiography. In his case, this hallucination was produce by a substance he had ingested.”

Peter forced himself to meet his uncle’s gaze and said, half-embarrassed but determinedly, “What if the fungus really talks?”

“Funguses don’t talk, Peter.” said Aubrey, startled. “Are you feeling all right yourself? You look a bit peaky.”

“You don’t understand. He’s rigged this fungus up to a bunch of computer equipment.”

“Has he, indeed?”

“He’s trained it using electrical impulses. Essentially it’s a kind of artificial intelligence, from what I understand, similar to what people create using digital technology, except the heart of this is a fungal network rather than numbers stored in silicon. I know it sounds mad but I believe there are precedents. Apparently some Chinese scientist trained slivers of silver to recognise letters and some scientists in Australia got human brain cells in a petri dish to play Pong.”

“Pong?”

“It’s a computer game.”

“I see.”

Aubrey thought quietly for a minute, furrowing his brow.

“This is all very well.” he said finally. “Perhaps the fungus does speak. We must allow for that. However, that doesn’t explain why it would be attempting to persuade your friend to murder someone.”

“He must have gone off his rocker.” said Peter. “What can I do?”

“From everything you’ve said, regardless of whether this fungus talks or not, prompt psychiatric intervention is vital.” said Aubrey. “It may be that he simply needs to sleep. Or … it may be a case of something more severe, requiring lengthy treatment. Either way, I propose we pay your friend a visit immediately.”

“It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”

“Not at all; with immediate intervention he has every chance of making a full recovery.”

“I mean the hour. It’s nearly ten now.”

“There’s no time like the present!” said Aubrey resolutely. “If he’s as deranged as you say he is, he needs urgent assistance.”

Aubrey rose to his feet. Peter sighed. Once his uncle got an idea into his head, it was utterly impossible to deflect him.

Before very long they were standing outside Adrian’s house; Peter for the second time that night.

“No lights.” said Peter, relieved. “He must have gone to sleep.”

“Well.” said Aubrey. “It appears we’ve wasted our time. But not to worry. Sleep’s the best thing for him. Actually in the advanced stages of schizophrenia, sleep becomes very difficult.”

“Maybe there’s not much wrong with him, then.”

“Perhaps not. Merely overwrought.”

“Hang on.” said Peter. “Where’s his car?”

At that moment, as if in answer to Peter’s question, Adrian’s car careered up to the house and stopped with squealing tyres. They had to jump back to avoid being hit.

Adrian staggered out, covered in blood and carrying a hammer.

“Oh God!” he cried. “I did it! I’m a murderer!”

They stared at him in shocked surprise. It was Aubrey who spoke first.

“Who’ve you killed, old chap?”

“The fungus …” said Adrian in a deranged half-whisper. “… the fungus will explain everything.”

He pushed his front door open and glided inside as if in a fugue. Peter and Aubrey exchanged horrified glances then followed him in.

Inside, Adrian slumped onto a chair at the table, and began talking to the fungus.

“Fungus,” he said, “I need you to explain to Peter and his uncle why I’ve just smashed someone’s head in with a hammer.”

Two hours later, already well past midnight, the three men emerged from the house. Peter was carrying a spade and Adrian was carrying the fungus in his arms, still attached to a handful of computer parts.

“Let’s get on with it, then.” said Aubrey, who was carrying a foldable trolley, folded up.

They got into Adrian’s car and drove a short distance to a deserted car park at the edge of the forest. In the car park they pulled the body out of the boot of the car and balanced it on the trolley, strapping it on with rubber bungee cords. It still had a large plastic sack over its head, which Adrian had pulled over it to protect the car’s upholstery.

“How far do we have to go?” Peter asked.

“Not far.” said Adrian. “About five minutes if you walk at a fair clip. Probably take us fifteen with the trolley.”

“Lead the way then.” said Peter.

Aubrey scanned the dark trees edging the car park nervously.

“I’m never talking to another fungus as long as I bloody well live.” he said.

When they reached the spot, Peter and Adrian took turns to dig a pit. It took them an hour of hard work to finally make the pit deep enough. They unfastened the body and Aubrey unceremoniously tipped it into the pit.

“We need to make it look like undisturbed forest floor.” he said. “Everything’s going to be in the finish.”

“Don’t worry.” said Peter. “We will.”

It was another hour before the spot was prepared to their satisfaction. Then Adrian carefully restored the fungus to its spot on a rotting log.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked the fungus.

“Yes, Adrian.” said the fungus. “This is where I belong. I have served my purpose. Now I am tired. This is my home. I want to rest.”

“I’ll come back and visit you.” said Adrian, a solitary tear forming in his eye and making its way down his cheek, glistening in the light of the electric torch held by Peter.

“I’ll look forward to your visit.” said the fungus.

“Goodbye. For now.” said Adrian.

“Au revoir.” said the fungus, and Adrian pulled out the wires, collected up the computer equipment, and dropped it into a backpack.

“That’s that, then.” said Peter. “Are you getting on the trolley or am I?”

“I think I will, if you don’t mind.” said Adrian. “I’m so tired, I can hardly move.”

“Up you get, then.” said Peter, and Adrian stepped onto the trolley. Peter grabbed hold of the handles, passed the torch to Aubrey, and began to wheel Adrian through the forest.

“If anyone sees us now, at least we can prove he’s alive.” said Aubrey grimly.

“Barely alive, quite honestly.” said Adrian.

After another twenty minutes they reached another car park and looked back at the faint tracks they’d left, continuously all the way through the forest, with satisfaction.

“Just looks like someone’s wheeled something from one car park to another.” said Aubrey. “Nothing suspicious about that. Probably think it was logs, or pruning equipment.”

“We did a great job covering up the grave.” said Peter. “They’ll not find that unless they go looking with cadaver dogs.”

“No reason for them to do that.” said Aubrey. “They found that poor woman’s body months ago. They won’t revisit the site.”

“I still think perhaps we should have gone to the police.” said Peter.

“And tell them what?” said Aubrey. “That a fungus witnessed a murder, and by meticulously scouring the internet, figured out where the murderer lived? That a fungus persuaded Adrian to eliminate the murderer? That a renowned psychiatrist helped him dispose of the body in the forest? No, none of that would have sounded at all acceptable to the police. We did the right thing. God knows how many more women he would have killed.”

“The fungus identified four previous victims.” said Adrian. “He would have just gone on and on.”

“Shame we can’t install this fungus as a police inspector.” said Aubrey. “Or a psychiatrist. I feel it would have made a fine psychiatrist.”

“Do we go back by the road or through the forest again?” said Peter.

“Best go back through the forest.” said Adrian. “We can’t risk being seen with this stuff.”

“I’ll carry the trolley.” said Peter. “Let’s fold it up.”

Soon they arrived back at Adrian’s car. They got in silently, too exhausted to speak, and before long they arrived back at Adrian’s house.

“Get some sleep, young man.” said Aubrey, shaking Adrian’s hand.

“I will.” he said, smiling tiredly.

All the same he was grateful to enter the modern sliding door of the ancient university building.

“Inspector Gray.” he said to the porter. “Here for Professor Richards.”

“To the left, down the corridor, room 108.” said the porter.

“Thank you.” said Gray.

“You investigating Paulson, I take it?” the porter called after him.

“You take it correctly.” said Gray.

“Strange business!” said the porter.

“Aye.” said Gray, over his shoulder.

He found Richards in his office as expected. Professor Richards turned out to be a small, nervous man, with big round steel-rimmed spectacles and thinning white hair.

After confirming some basic details, Gray said to him, “Now to the meat of the matter. We know Paulson’s disappeared, and at the moment that’s all we know. The question is, why has he disappeared. If you could give me some insight into that, it might help us locate him.”

“I don’t like to talk badly of colleagues.” said Richards.

“No, of course not.”

“He performed his duties to the letter and he was renowned in his field.”

“So I hear.” said Gray. “Remind me what his field was, precisely? I’m not sure I completely understand it. I’m just a humble police inspector, you understand. All this talk of fields and particles …”

“Yes, I quite understand.” said Richards. “He was basically a theoretical physicist, specialising in gauge theories and renormalisation. It’s a kind of ... well, it’s mathematical. His work was highly mathematical.”

“Something to do with fields and particles?” said Gray.

“Yes, basically.”