No, that wouldn’t be the worst, he thought. They could keep him as a slave or torture him.

Auron shuddered, and retreated silently into his apartment in the abandoned ski lodge and shut the balcony door as quietly as he could manage.

He took Jor out of his pocket.

“Who do you think they are?” he asked.

“Don’t know, mate. Probably towards the end of the war, the various armies fell into disarray, and now they’re just people trying to survive.”

He opened the wardrobe so he could see himself in the mirror inside the door. He’d changed his rudimentary self-made clothes for clothes that he’d found in the abandoned houses, but he still looked a wreck. No amount of bathing and grooming could conceal that fact that here was a man who, at the age of perhaps fifty-eight, was already approaching the end of his lifespan. A man who had endured unspeakable things for three decades on an alien planet. A man whose nerves had been half-shattered by endless attacks of giant furry alien crabs.

But he was safe now. He was home.

Suddenly a shot rang out. For a second he froze, but no more shots came. Probably the soldiers were hunting something, he told himself.

He turned to look at the fish tank full of blue liquid and tangled wires that stood next to an open notebook computer on the large wooden table; a table that had probably once, before the war, seen happy gatherings of friends or family.

Next to it stood the matter interactor he’d built from computer parts and gardening chemicals. He was pleased with it. It was a beautiful thing of plastic project boxes and wire coils, arranged around a camera tripod. It barely even rattled.

“Jor, is your communication link with the Sirius device fully stable?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” said Jor. “Stop worrying. Everything’s in place. Everything’s working.”

“I want to start on something that isn’t essential to my life. I’m thinking teeth. I could fix my teeth. They’re a mess.”

“Great idea, Auron. Shall I get Sirius to devise a plan?”

His heart began to beat wildly. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He couldn’t speak.

“Auron?” said Jor.

“No, not yet. Let me think.”

“You’re prevaricating,” said Jor.

“I know. I know that. I’m going for a walk.”

“You’re still thinking about what happened to Jer when Virellon fixed his tooth.”

“You’re smart.”

“The new device is —”

“Enough, Jor!” he said, interrupting.

Jor fell silent.

Auron patted the weapon holstered at his side. He’d had Sirius make some adjustments to it. It would work, now. Reliably.

He made himself a cup of tea from teabags he’d found in one of the houses. There was no milk for the tea. He wondered if he could get Sirius to create some kind of synthetic milk. Why not? In fact, Auron thought to himself, he hadn’t even begun to tap Sirius’s capabilities.

The process would require care and caution.

After drinking the tea, he walked out of the apartment and over to the stairs, from where he could see the landscape on the other side of the ski lodge. The men were walking off towards the town. He waited till they’d summited the little hill next to the village, then went downstairs and outside.

It was good to be outside. The warm sun made him feel alive.

He began to walk towards the pond. It was largely stagnant, but there were still fish in it.

He was almost there when he heard a faint whimper. Looking around, he saw a shape in the grass.

It was a dog. The animal had lost half of its fur and was painfully thin. Its exposed skin was covered in sore patches. Then he saw the wound: a small, circular opening in the animal’s thigh.

The dog growled, but remained lying where it was.

“Hey!” he said, gently. “What’s happened to you?”

The dog whined, and licked its lips.

There could be little doubt about the wound. Someone had shot it, and hadn’t even bothered to stick around long enough to see whether the wound was fatal or not.

The soldiers.

“So that’s what kind of men they are,” said Auron quietly to himself.

He began to push his hands carefully underneath the dog so he could pick it up. It whined pitifully. Once he had the dog in his arms, he began to walk briskly back to the ski lodge.

“Don’t worry old boy,” he said. “I’m going to fix you. You’ve nothing to lose, anyway.”

The dog was weighing heavily on him by the time he was halfway home. Auron was weak and malnourished.

“I think I’ll call you Freddie,” he said.

The animal gazed at him with a halfway mixture of trust and fear.

“Don’t worry, Freddie,” Auron said to it.

In the apartment, he pulled a blanket from the wardrobe and lay Freddie down on it. Freddie briefly tried to get up, but quickly abandoned the plan, yelping.

“Jor, I’m going to put you in charge of patching this dog up. Talk to Sirius. Can you do it? Painlessly.”

“I suggest spreading the healing process over several days, Auron,” said Jor. “Will you be giving it food and water?”

“Of course I’ll be giving it food and water. I’ll get some dog food from the houses.”

“Would you like to begin the process?”

“Yes, but alleviate its pain and put it to sleep if you have to do anything painful. Or sedate it a bit. Keep it calm. I don’t want it suffering.”

“Got it, mate. Leave it to me.”

Auron stood looking thoughtfully at Freddie, who promptly fell asleep with a contented expression on his face.

“If it works on you it’ll probably work on me,” he said to himself.

He went out to look for dog food.

When he returned, carrying several cans and various dog treats, he picked up a book he’d found in one of the houses, sat on the sofa and opened it. Freddie was still sleeping.

The start of the book was not promising, in Auron’s eyes. It spent an entire paragraph describing the sensory experience of being in a cafe. There was little indication of it containing anything technical.

He tried to meditate, for the first time in thirty years, closing his eyes and attempting to focus on his breathing. He couldn’t do it. He opened them again and went to look at Freddie. Freddie was still sleeping peacefully.

He went back to the sofa and resumed reading.

He finished the book four hours later. The sun was setting.

“What a waste of time,” he said, throwing the book with a careful and practised aim into the wastebasket.

Then an unmistakable sound reached his ears. Someone had just smashed open the locked door of the lodge.

He took the weapon from his belt.

From the floor below, the sound of voices emerged; the voices of several men. He couldn’t tell what language they were speaking.

“Jor, who are they?” he whispered.

“No idea,” said Jor.

“Analyse them! Use the interactor.”

“The interactor’s busy fixing the dog. Do you want me to divert it?”

“No! What do you mean, busy? It can only do one thing at a time now?”

“Repairing a living being is a complex task.”

Auron listened as the men smashed down doors on the ground floor.

“If they come in here, can Sirius kill them?”

“Is that ethical?”

“Ethical?” said Auron incredulously. “What are you talking about, ethical?”

“It just seems incompatible with the ethics you taught me.”

“They shot a dog in cold blood and left him to die slowly in the grass. I’ll kill the lot of them if they come anywhere near us. Answer the question.”

“How many are there?”

“I don’t know, five maybe. Can’t you sense them remotely?”

“Like I said, it’s busy with the dog. The process is information-intensive. On top of which, the range of the device is limited. The information we can get from scanning the surroundings might be incomplete.”

“Can you divert it temporarily?”

“There will be some risk to the dog.”

Auron sighed.

“Look, I think there are five of them. Sounds like about five. Same people I saw earlier, probably.”

“They can be killed, but the process might be slow enough for one of them to get off a shot, if we’re looking at a conflict situation here.”

“Do you think they might try to harm me?”

“Possibly.”

Auron swore under his breath.

“But possibly not,” Jor added.

Auron went to the middle of the tiny apartment and stood facing the door, the weapon drawn.

For a while, it sounded as though some of the men were trying to persuade the others to investigate the second floor. He could hear them arguing on the stairs. Then, they descended the stairs and left.

He breathed an enormous sigh of relief and sheathed the weapon in its holster.

That night he slept uneasily and twice awoke shouting, dreaming giant crabs had got hold of his feet. Both times he couldn’t immediately recognise his surroundings, but then he remembered everything: the portal, Jer’s death, the ski lodge.

When the same thing happened a third time, he drew the curtains and saw the sun already beginning to illuminate the mountains in the west, and he made himself a tea, which he sat drinking while eating old, dry crackers.

Freddie was still asleep, but his skin appeared much improved and the bullet wound was clearly healing rapidly.

“How’s the dog?” Auron asked Jor.

“He’s progressing,” said Jor.

“Why’s he asleep?”

“Still sedated, mate. We can’t be sure the rapid healing process won’t cause distress if he were awake. Would you like me to wake him up?”

“No, let him sleep.”

Auron spent the day pacing about, thinking. Periodically he went outside and scanned the hills for signs of the men.

“As soon as you’ve finished fixing Freddie, we need to build an improved Sirius and a more powerful interactor,” he said to Jor, while he sat on a bench outside, watching the road that led from the village. “We’ll use the current interactor to build improved versions of both. I need to de-age myself and I want to know what’s happened in England. I used to know people there.”

“You’re the boss,” said Jor.

“I am the boss,” Auron repeated with a sardonic smile.

He stood up and gazed at the distant mountains. They were remote, inhospitable, and yet beautiful.

“Jor?”

“Yes, Auron?”

“Do you have feelings? Do you experience emotion?”

There was a long pause, then Jor said, “I don’t know.”

Auron gave a short laugh.

“Of course you don’t,” he said.

That night he awoke only once, this time dreaming the men had smashed their way into the apartment and were proposing to torture him, for fun.

He awoke at dawn, sunlight filtering in through gaps in the curtains, to find Freddie licking his face.

“Urggh, get off!” he said, and he pushed the dog gently back.

He rubbed his eyes and gazed thoughtfully at Freddie.

The bald patches on Freddie’s body were covered in short new black-and-white fur. The surviving longer fur was still matted and dirty.

Auron found himself smiling irrepressibly.

“I’m going to have to give you a bath, you filthy hound,” he said.

Freddie barked at him and squatted down on his front paws as though he wanted to play, his tail wagging manically.

“You absolute lunatic,” said Auron affectionately, and he ruffled Freddie’s head—gently, avoiding the patches of skin covered in short fur, that had been bald and sore only two days earlier.

He fed Freddie and ate a breakfast himself of beans from a can, washed down with tea. Then he took Freddie for a walk, warily eyeing the hills for signs of the soldiers. Everything seemed peaceful.

Freddie ran about madly, stopping here and there to sniff at things.

“Jor,” said Auron.

“Here,” said Jor.

“I need to build a more powerful Sirius. And I’ll need a much more powerful interactor. We need to get on with it. I want to de-age myself, and I have to see what’s going on in England. I want to track down people I know. The new device will need to be capable of opening portals and remote sensing. Also I want it to retrieve and assimilate knowledge from whatever sources can be found.”

“Is that everything?” said Jor.

“No. It needs to be able to create food. Is that possible? Decent food, not just any old rubbish.”

“I don’t know,” said Jor.

“Does Sirius know?”

“Sirius doesn’t know either. But I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible.”

“Another thing. I want the new Sirius to be incorporated into your structure. I don’t want to talk to it directly. I want it to be something you can access to augment your capabilities. Not part of you; something you can use. I want the whole thing to still fit into my pocket.”

He took Jor from his pocket and turned it around in his fingers.

“Can it be done?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Sirius need to analyse your request. It needs to give the matter some thought.”

“All right. And I want to incorporate the new interactor too. A much more powerful interactor than we’ve currently got.”

“That’s not possible,” said Jor.

“What? Why not?”

“The interactor cannot be miniaturised.”

“You mean you and Sirius can’t do it?”

“Exactly, Auron. Sorry.”

“All right, fine, we’ll focus on augmenting your intelligence and we’ll keep the interactor separate.”

“Do you want us to start working on it?”

“Aren’t you busy with Freddie still?”

“He’s out of range of the interactor.”

“So he is.”

“We can safely let him alone. Natural healing processes will finish the job.”

“Then begin.”

Auron sat down on the hillside. Here and there, cattle roamed about, ponderously chewing grass. Further down the hill a goat trotted past with two kids, heading up the hill to the north.

The air smelt faintly of cow manure, but mixed with the scent of fragrant plants. He picked a little square-stemmed plant with purple flowers. Perhaps it was marjoram, or oregano, or thyme. He’d never been able to tell the difference.

In the distance, the tops of the mountains were still capped with snow from the winter.

In a way, aside from the dubious soldiers that the various armies had cut loose—probably traumatised conscripts—the place was a paradise. But he couldn’t stay in paradise. There was work to be done.

He whistled to Freddie and began to make his way back to the ski lodge. Freddie scampered after him, tearing around in circles like a puppy.

When he got back he discovered Sirius had already constructed a new and powerful-looking interactor, quite unlike the device he had first constructed in his spare bedroom in York. It was sleek and well-designed; a gleaming cylinder, two feet high.

“Everything’s ready, Auron,” said Jor, from his pocket.

“Ready?” Auron said, confused.

“You want to augment my intelligence. It can be done. Place me on the table.”

“Is there any risk?”

“Not as far as we can tell.”

He took Jor out of his pocket.

“If you die, I’ll miss you,” said Auron, holding Jor up to his eyes.

“No,” said Jor, “you miss Jer, and if you want to bring him back, Sirius and I aren’t currently up to it.”

Auron smiled mirthlessly, and placed Jor on the table.

“I do sort of miss him,” he said. “The absolute idiot. At least you can’t talk, Freddie. My God, he was annoying.”

Freddie gave a single bark, as if agreeing.

The hard case of the Jor device seemed to fizz and expand, and smoke began to pour out of it. Then the smoke abruptly seemed to take direction and shot back into Jor. The device’s case hardened.

“Jor?” said Auron, uncertainly.

“Still here, mate,” said Jor.

“Is it done?”

“It’s done. What would you like to do next, Auron?”

“Can you fix Jer?”

“Still not. Sorry. You’ll need to build something more powerful and probably a lot bigger.”

“How much bigger?”

“You could try swimming-pool size.”

“If I do that, will it be able to resurrect Jer?”

“Still don’t know, Auron. You’re asking me to predict what a more powerful system could do. There’s this thing called the Halting Problem.”

Auron ground his teeth and stared out at the mountains. He felt strangely powerless.

“OK,” he said, finally. “In that case, I want—let me see. I want a full English breakfast, with a coffee and an orange juice, no black pudding, and a rack of various sauces.”

A swirling mist appeared on the table in front of him, next to Jor, thickened, and then resolved itself into a full English breakfast. Next to it stood a French press containing coffee, a mug, a small jug of milk and a glass of orange juice.

“Is it—is it safe to eat?” Auron asked, finding himself unexpectedly and unaccountably emotional.

“Perfectly safe. Enjoy.”

Auron began to laugh, and soon tears of joy were running from his eyes. He fell onto the floor, laughing hysterically. Freddie wagged his tail, bemused.

Eventually he recovered his composure and picked himself up.

“It’s better while it’s still hot, probably,” said Jor.

“It’s a miracle,” said Auron.

“Miracle of science.”

“The interactor didn’t even make a sound.”

“It’s capable of much more than cookery, Auron.”

As he ate, he began to run his ideas past Jor.

“Listen,” he said, pausing to place a forkful of food in his mouth and chew it, and then throwing a rasher of bacon to Freddie, who was waiting eagerly, his eyes fixed on the proceedings, “if I ever somehow lose you, Jor, you devote yourself entirely to getting back into my hands.”

“Understood.”

“Don’t kill anyone, but find a way to have them bring you back to me. And don’t take any orders from them. Just manipulate them appropriately.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” said Auron, pausing again to glare at Jor.

“Humour is a normal part of human speech, mate.”

“True,” said Auron.

After eating he dropped himself onto the sofa, placing Jor in his pocket. His knees ached from the walk.

“I need to see what’s happening in England,” he said. “Are any of my relatives still alive?”

“No, Auron. I’m sorry,” came the reply.

“Not a one of them?”

“No-one closer than a second cousin.”

“I see.”

He stared at the floor miserably. He was lost in unpleasant reflections when Freddie jumped onto the sofa next to him and tried to lick his face.

“Get off, you cretin!” he said, pleasantly, and he put his arm over Freddie, who lay down with his head on Auron’s lap.

“OK,” he said, “let me think. Think. I know; I had a friend called Viktor. Hadn’t spoken to him in a year, because he lived in Cambridge. Is he still alive?”

There was a pause, then Jor said, “Viktor Feher is still alive. He lives with his wife in Cambridge.”

“Viktor’s married? Oh well, I suppose it has been thirty years. Can you open a view of him on the wall? I mean like a TV screen. I mean, if he’s not doing anything too private.”

“I can do it,” said Jor.

A painting on the wall depicting hills dotted with trees and farms seemed to glow, and then an image appeared.

The image was of a man and a woman lying fully clothed on a filthy bed. Both of them were bald, their skin covered in ugly sores. Their clothes were no more than rags. The woman seemed to be asleep; the man was crying softly. The walls of the room they were in were blackened with smoke.

“Dear God!” Auron exclaimed. “That’s Viktor and his wife?”

“Exactly,” said Jor.

“What’s happened to them?”

“The war, Auron. They are close to death.”

“I have to help them. Can you repair them?”

“From this distance, there would be considerable risk.”

“You’re telling me you can open interplanetary portals now but you can’t improve the health of a couple of humans?”

“Not without risk, from this distance, Auron. It’s not a question of raw energy. That can be diverted from distant stars. It’s a question of information.”

“Then I’m going there. We’re going there. With the interactor.”

“You may not survive, Auron. Radiation levels are high. You are weak for your age.”

“I’m not weak! What are you talking about?”

“Your immune function is poor, your heart is unstable and blood vessels in your brain are stretched dangerously thin.”

Auron rubbed his face with his hand.

“Then we’ll open a portal and bring them here.”

“Even a change of climate could finish them off at this point.”

“Then I have to fix myself first. After that I’m going there. How long will it take?”

“It can’t be done safely in less than a week. You’re a mess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, your heart’s messed up. Your brain’s prematurely aged.”

“I feel OK.”

“If you want to survive Cambridge, you’ll need to be young and fit.”

Auron paced back and forth, wrangling with himself internally.

“OK, then. We’ll do it,” he said, arriving at a conclusion. “We’ll start with my teeth. At least those aren’t crucial.”

“If I may make a suggestion, Auron,” said Jor, “better start with your heart. It’ll probably be all right for another few years, but then again, it might not be.”

Auron looked at the awful image on the screen.

“Will they survive another week?”

“Probably,” came the reply.

“Send them some food at least. And clean water. Can you manage that without killing them?”

“Their mental state is precarious, Auron. I recommend taking it yourself in a week.”

Auron stared at the image live on the screen where the painting had been.

“This is ridiculous. You’re a computer. You have no real experience of life. No offence.”

“None taken, mate.”

“I want you to put together a box containing food, clean water, and whatever kind of drugs might help them. Anti-radiation drugs and so forth. All clearly labelled with clear instructions. And I want you to make it appear somewhere where they’ll find it. And on top, put a note: from Auron. I’ll see you in a week. Have you got that?”

“Would you like me to stick to conventional existing drugs or devise new drugs?”

“Which will give them the greatest chance of survival and the least pain and suffering?”

“New drugs, considering the state of them.”

“New drugs it is, then. How quickly can you do it?”

“I’ll have it done in an hour.”

“Right. Close the viewport.”

Auron waved at the horrible image on the screen, which promptly faded, to be replaced once again by the painting of hills, farms and trees.

He sat down heavily on the sofa again, emotionally drained.

“What do you think Freddie?” he said.

Freddie, who was lying on the sofa next to him, sat up and whined cheerfully.

“Yes, my thoughts precisely,” said Auron.

In a filthy bed in a half-ruined house on the outskirts of Cambridge, Viktor Feher placed a hand gently on his wife’s shoulder.

“I’m going to fetch more water,” he said.

“I’ll come with you,” she murmured.

“Stay here,” he said.

He could see very well that Rosa Feher no longer possessed the energy to rise to her feet; a fact which she didn’t want to admit, even to herself.

Rosa turned slowly and painfully onto her back.

“What if something happens to you?”

“Then we’ll meet again in Heaven.”

“You don’t believe in that stuff,” she said with a tired, exhausted smile.

“Not before the war. Now I know the Devil exists, so I have to think God exists also.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I have to believe there is more to life than this nightmare.”

“Then stay here and pray with me.”

“Without fresh water we’ll both be dead in a day.”

“With fresh water we’ll be dead in a week.”

Viktor laughed grimly, his smile quickly replaced by an expression of infinite sadness.

“You say a prayer. I’ll … agree with it, or however it works.”

Rosa cast her mind back to her schooldays and uttered a short prayer.

Viktor grunted.

“Do you think anyone heard you?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” she said, with a brief smile.

Viktor slowly pushed himself off the bed and onto his feet.

“Come back safely, Viktor,” said Rosa. “Come back to me.”

He turned to see tears in her eyes.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “I’ll be twenty minutes.”

She was close to death. He knew it. She would pass away, and he would live on without her. For how long? Perhaps a week, as she had suggested. In the worst case, a month.

He opened the bedroom door, and froze.

“What is it?” said Rosa, suddenly alarmed.

“Someone’s left a box here.”

“No-one’s been in here,” she rasped, the exertion of speaking causing her radiation-scarred lungs to wheeze. “We would have heard it.”

“I’m hallucinating,” said Viktor.

He lowered himself painfully onto his knees, breaking into a fit of coughing as he did so.

“Viktor?” said Rosa fearfully.

“It’s from … Auron,” he said in amazement.

In spite of her weakness, Rosa slowly struggled to a sitting position, propping pillows behind her.

“Who?”

“I only know one Auron. Auron Blake. But he disappeared a long time ago. Vanished. Together with his friend. I thought he was dead.”

He opened the box and found two white plastic bottles, labelled, “Anti-radiation. Drink these immediately.”

Viktor rummaged about briefly in the rest of the box.

“There’s food in here,” he said. “And water.”

He staggered back to the bed, carrying a bottle in each hand. He gave one to Rosa, who examined it curiously, holding it up in front of her cataract-dimmed eyes in order to see the label.

Viktor sat slowly down on the bed, and had another coughing fit, but forced himself to stop, enduring the subsequent wheezing and the feeling that a thick fluid was stuck in his lungs. Coughing provided temporary minor relief, but it was excessively painful.

“What do you think?” he said. “Do we drink it?”

“If you friend’s been here, why didn’t we hear him? And why didn’t he say hello?”

“Well, he was always the anti-social type. Kept himself to himself. Apart from me and the fellow he was working with, I don’t think he had any friends. He was … what’s the word? A workaholic.”

“We must be dreaming,” said Rosa.

“I can’t understand it,” said Viktor.

Rosa unscrewed the bottle.

“Smells lovely.” she said, suddenly smiling. “Like a strawberry milkshake.”

Viktor unscrewed his bottle, and sniffed.

“We’ve nothing to lose,” he observed.

Then he realised that Rosa was already drinking hers.

He watched her anxiously.

“Take it easy!” he said.

She seemed to be gulping down half the bottle.

When she finished, she struggled up to a full sitting position, smiling.

“The pain’s gone from my throat!” she said. “Viktor, I already feel better!”

Viktor stared at the bottle in his hand, bewildered. Then he began to drink.

“Are you ready?” said Jor.

Auron had given Jor extensive instructions on the topic of repairing his health and de-ageing him. Clearly Jor had made an excellent job of fixing Freddie, but even so, he was nervous. The repairs he himself would require were considerably more complex than Freddie’s problems, and included alterations to the blood vessels and cellular structures in his brain.

“Begin,” said Auron.

For a minute he stood there, watching the interactor, trying to decide if he could feel the machine working on him or not. He decided that he couldn’t.

He noticed no difference in himself at all until the following morning. Auron forced himself to look at his own reflection in the mirror, scared of what he might see. When he saw himself, he straightened up suddenly, startled.

His face, which had ended up resembling the face of a man of perhaps seventy, at the age of fifty-seven, now looked more like fifty. The roots of his hair had turned dark. He checked his teeth. A tooth that had cracked and turned brown was now white and healthy again. Then he looked at his hands. The liver spots were fading, and the wrinkles smoothing out.

Auron had never quite understood why people cheer and fling their arms in the air, but for a second, he came closer to understanding than ever previously.

Then he remembered Jer. Jer should have been enjoying the same experience. Instead, he was lying crumpled in the freezer, dead.

“I’ll sort you out, Jer,” he muttered to himself. “I know there’s a way to do it. There has to be.”

The next day he appeared closer to mid-forties, and the day after that, forty.

His joints no longer ached and his heart no longer raced at night.

He took Freddie walking in the hills, finding it surprisingly easy to ascend the steep ski slope.

Not seeing any particular reason to stop, they walked all the way to the top, where they found the wreckage of a mountain refuge. He picked up a sign that had somehow blown onto its face in front of a pile of rubble. It explained that the building, now nothing but a pile of stones, had been made use of by the Italian partisans while fighting against the Nazis in WWII.

“Obviously some kind of a trouble hotspot,” said Auron, laughing wryly to himself.

The top of the mountain was peaceful, but the vista on the other side of the mountain displayed considerable devastation. Near the horizon, an entire town seemed to have been destroyed, and a little further to the south, a black pall of smoke rose into the air.

“I’ll fix you,” said Auron, looking at the world below him. “I can fix you.”

He turned and made his way down the hillside.

Three days later, the process was finished. Auron had Jor make him a new set of clothes that actually fitted, and then he enjoyed the strange experience of having Jor give him a haircut. The interactor, suitably programmed, caused all the unwanted pieces of hair to fall off and dissolve into a strange thick smoke, which coalesced into a thin stream that made its way out of the open balcony door.

Auron opened the wardrobe so he could see himself in a full-length mirror.

A sensation of euphoria, almost impossible to contain, surged through him.

“Best dressed man on the planet, probably,” he said, and then he dissolved yet again into helpless, hysterical laughter.

He was, for the second time in his life, twenty-seven years old, and he looked like he’d just stepped out of a cafe and was on his way to a meeting at some sort of innovative new startup.

Freddie didn’t seem to notice any difference.

Auron asked Jor to check Freddie over and help his fur grow back, and by the following day Freddie looked like he’d just got back from the dog grooming parlour.

He had Jor synthesise food for Freddie, mostly consisting of freshly-cooked meat, which Freddie ate in astonishing quantities.

“Jor,” he said, “I want you to find a large empty farmhouse near Cambridge, completely renovate it and make it ready for us to move there. Make sure it has some kind of large garage. In the garage, construct a kind of powerful armoured vehicle. I’m going to be using it to drive through the town. And fit the house out with everything I might want. I mean, uh … kitchen equipment, a coffee machine, a shower and a bath, the whole works. And put food in the cupboards.”

“You want normality,” Jer observed. “Or perhaps my cooking isn’t to your taste.”

“Very funny. Yes, I want normality. I want to remember how things were. Oh, and I’ll need some other buildings close by for other people to live in. Fix them all up properly. How many people are still alive in Cambridge?”

“At least a thousand.”

“As many as that?”

“It’ll be fewer by next year, Auron.”

“Not if I can help it. I’m going to sort the place out.”

“Do you intend to move there permanently?”

“That’s exactly what I intend.”

The following day he had Jor open a portal to his new house in Cambridge, and he moved the freezer containing Jer into the basement of the house. Auron walked around the house marvelling at it. It was the kind of place he’d hoped one day to be able to buy when he had been twenty-seven the first time around. The surroundings, on the other hand, were horrific. The surfaces of the roads had been melted and cratered by bombs, and most of the buildings were nothing but shards of teetering brick and piles of rubble.

While walking about outside the house he began to feel sick.

“It’s the radiation,” said Jor. “You need to go back and let me repair the damage. The process isn’t safe from this range.”

“I don’t want to be tied to the interactor. Can you make a supply of drugs that can heal the effects of radiation? Put them in the kitchen. And I want dog treats containing radiation medication for Freddie.”

“No problem.”

He went back inside. Bottles of pills were already waiting for him. He swallowed one, and he opened a packet of anti-radiation dog treats and fed one to Freddie, who immediately seemed anxious for more.

Then he went back through the portal to the ski lodge.

“Let’s move the interactor next,” he said. “Are there going to be any particular issues with it? Can it maintain the portal if we move it?”

But he didn’t hear Jor’s reply. Suddenly his attention was caught by the sound of the front door of the lodge being thrown open, and the chatter of the soldiers’ voices reached his ears.

“What are they doing here?” he asked Jor.

“They spotted you earlier on,” said Jor. “They’re looking for you.”

“Can we move the interactor?”

“It’s going to be a multi-step process, Auron. We’ll have to build a device to maintain the portal from the other side, first.”

He could hear the men making their way up the stairs.

“There isn’t going to be time. Freddie, come here.”

He led Freddie back through the portal.

“Stay!” he said.

Freddie sat down obediently. He was a fast learner.

Auron darted back into the ski lodge.

“Jor, make the portal one-way, so I can get to Cambridge but Freddie can’t come here. And disguise it, so it looks like a normal piece of wall.”

The portal dimmed and vanished.

The man were going from flat to flat, smashing in the doors and looking around inside.

“Get ready to kill them if necessary,” said Auron, “but wait for my command.”

The men broke into the flat next-door.

Auron drew the weapon from its sheath, which he’d upgraded to look like something sleek and modern instead of the previous animal-skin holster that he’d made on Frith, and pointed it towards the door.

“What steps are involved in moving the interactor?” he asked Jor.

Jor began to explain, but then the door of his apartment burst open, and the soldiers, if that’s what they were, ran in.

“S-Stay where you are,” Auron stammered.

“What the hell is this?” said one of the men, smiling unpleasantly.

His accent was unfamiliar to Auron. He wasn’t Italian, nor Austrian.

Another of the men switched the light on an off, and made some remark that included a word similar to “electricity”, apparently marvelling at the fact that the apartment had power.

“What are you doing here?” said Auron, his hands shaking as he pointed the weapon at them.

“What are you doing here, is the question,” said the man at the front of the group.

“I live here.”

“Oh. You live here.”

“You shot my dog.”

The man laughed, and said something to the other men in a language Auron couldn’t understand. They all laughed.

“That wasn’t us,” said the man. “We don’t shoot dogs. Do we, comrades?”

The man’s manner was insincere, but it was impossible to be certain that he was lying.

“We’re taking this place over,” said the man.

He sniffed the air.

“You’ve got food. You can make us something to eat.”

“You can’t use this place,” said Auron. “Get out.”

“We can do whatever we like,” said the man, and without any warning he pointed his rifle at Auron’s shoulder and pulled the trigger.

A shot rang out and Auron doubled over in pain. The weapon fell from his hand.

“We might let you live, if you can be useful to us,” said the man. “For a while.”

Suddenly an alarm sounded, loud regular pulses of square wave emerging from the large curtained alcove where Auron had kept Jer’s body in the chest freezer.

“What’s that?” said the man, and he went into the alcove to look. Auron backed slowly towards the wall.

The man shouted something in a foreign language, and three of the other men went to look too, only one of them keeping his rifle pointed at Auron.

Auron held his shoulder, grimacing in pain. He could feel blood running down his arm.

Then the man guarding him decided to take something out of his pocket; perhaps gum, or a packet of cigarettes. Auron ran backwards through the portal.

“Freddie, come on!” he shouted, and he ran through the immaculate living room, the sound of the men shouting in bafflement ringing in his ears, and out of the door at the far side of the house. He carried on running. He knew what the alarm meant.

He was already some distance from the house when he managed to get his thoughts in order.

“Jor, close the portal!” he said.

Before Jor could reply, there was an ear-splitting explosion. Freddie cowered, and then began barking wildly.

“Jor, what happened?” said Auron, although there could only be one possible cause of the explosion.

“What do you mean?” said Jor.

“There was a huge explosion!”

“Oh, yeah, the energy system became unstable.”

“I nearly died! We only got twenty seconds’ warning, if even that!”

“Yeah, sorry. There was an electromagnetic flare on the star we were channeling energy from and it got unstable.”

“Couldn’t you have given me more warning?”

“It happened quite quickly.”

Auron bent over in pain.

“I’ve got a bullet in my arm.” he said, through clenched teeth.

“We can repair it, take the bullet out. You’ll have to build another interactor.”

“Oh, God!”

He looked at the devastation around him.

“Am I going to die?”

“I don’t know mate, sorry,” said Jor.

“Bloody useless! How can this possibly have happened again? Why can’t I hang on to these damned interactors?”

“What you’re attempting Auron, it’s not an easy business.”

Auron staggered back to the house. Part of it had been destroyed by the explosion, but it was a large house, all on one level, and the rest of it still seemed habitable.

Half of the kitchen had been destroyed, but he picked through the rubble and found some food, and most importantly of all, the anti-radiation medication.

“Will the pills help with my shoulder?” he asked Jor.

“They weren’t designed for that but they will help it to heal,” said Jor. “If there’s a bullet lodged in it they won’t get that out.”

Auron unscrewed one of the pill bottles with one hand and took another of the pills.

In the evening, he ate a meal of cheese and fresh bread, sitting on a bed in one of the bedrooms on the other side of the house from the explosion. The room was immaculate, aside from the dirt his footsteps had trailed over the carpet, and even the bedclothes smelt fresh. Jor had arranged for the house to have an electricity supply, and clean water came out of the taps in the bathroom, but now these facts made him nervous. The previous energy system had lasted less than a week before—presumably—killing everyone in the apartment. Neither did he have any way to deactivate it, with the interactor gone. But he couldn’t bring himself to take refuge elsewhere in the war-torn town.

“If I die, I die,” he said to himself.

That night his shoulder was painful, and he slept only fitfully. Freddie slept on the bed next to him.

In the morning, it became apparent to him that he really hadn’t thought anywhere nearly enough about what things should be in the house. He had made Jor construct a kitchen filled with food on a whim, and half of the kitchen was now rubble. There was no laboratory, and he had no spare clothes.

He tore some fabric off one of the debris-covered sofas in the living room and fashioned a kind of sling for his arm. Holding it up helped with the pain from his shoulder.

“Jor,” he said, “we have to go and rescue Viktor and his wife. Is the vehicle ready?”

“Yes, Auron,” came the reply.

“Can you give me directions?”

“Sure,” said Jor. “It might be a bit dangerous though. Maybe wait till we can fix your shoulder. We need a new interactor.”

“I told them I’d be there in a week, and I’ll be there in a week. Viktor’ll help me get the parts I need.”

“Fair enough.”

“Where’s the vehicle?”

“In the garage. Through the kitchen.”

Auron traipsed back into the ruined kitchen, Freddie following, tail wagging happily in the air. The door leading to the garage was hanging off its hinges.

He kicked at it until there was enough space to get past it into the garage. There, he fumbled around for a light switch, and finally found one.

In front of him was a thing that looked like a cross between an enormous off-roader and a tank, all black gleaming metal, with no windows.

“Good God,” said Auron.

“Are you looking at the vehicle?” Jor asked.

“I think so,” Auron replied. “How am I supposed to see where I’m going?”

“There are screens inside that reproduce an accurate image of the outside,” said Jor.

“How do I get in?”

“The door opens with your fingerprint. I’m going to have to explain the controls. There’s a joystick and some other stuff. It has its own battery, which is fully charged. It’s good for three thousand miles.”

Auron held his finger against a sensor on the door, and the door slid open.

Inside, the vehicle more resembled the inside of a plane than a car—or perhaps a kind of spaceship.

He laughed to himself.

“Perfect,” he said. “Jor, you might blow things up occasionally but you’ve really excelled yourself here.”

Inside the car, he had a full view of the garage, as though the sides and ceiling of the vehicle were transparent.

Soon he was trundling through the town, Freddie watching the world go by from the front passenger seat.

The town was a mess, the streets barely recognisable. Parker’s Piece, once a pleasant green park, was now nothing but a tangle of half-dead weeds strewn with rubble. The town centre had been almost levelled.

Here and there he saw survivors of the war, all of them bald from the radiation, and wearing rags. They limped and staggered away when they saw him, apparently afraid.

He continued through the town, describing what he saw to Jor, until finally he arrived at what was, in all probability, Viktor’s house.

He descended from the vehicle, looking around himself warily, and went up to the front door.

The house was one of only a handful of houses in that area that were somewhat intact. Evidently, Viktor had been very lucky. The windows were boarded up and part of the roof was caved in, but the rest of the house was still standing.

He knocked on the door and waited.

Inside, Viktor and Rosa were eating at the table, smiling and laughing, in spite of the nightmare that surrounded them, their problems temporarily forgotten in the midst of their sudden unexpected good fortune, which had bafflingly plucked them from the arms of death itself.

When they heard Auron’s knock, they froze. Rosa was suddenly worried.

“Who can it be?” she said.

“It’s him,” said Viktor. “It has to be him.”

He rose and went to the door, taking a kitchen knife in case whoever was at the door launched an unprovoked attack. He opened it. Then he froze in astonishment.

There was Auron, dressed in a casual white shirt and jeans, the sleeve of the shirt covered in blood, his full head of hair in disarray but apparently professionally cut. The most amazing thing was, not only did Auron appear unaffected by the radiation, but he didn’t appear to have aged at all in the past thirty years.

“Is it … you?” whispered Viktor, hoarsely.

“It’s me,” said Auron. “I’m here to help you, Viktor.”

“How is this possible?”

“Can I come in?” said Auron. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to tell you.”

A few minutes later they were laughing and joking inside Viktor’s kitchen, Viktor and Rosa staring at Auron as though he was an angel from Heaven.

Both of them appeared thin but healthy, and both had a fuzz of new hair growing rapidly on their previously-bald heads.

“So you see,” said Auron, “I need your help to build a new interactor. Then we can sort this mess out. Come back with me to my house. There’s a spare room that didn’t get blown up. I have water and electricity. In fact, you can have your own house if you like.

“There’s a lab downstairs, in the cellar,” said Viktor. “Probably there are things you can use.”

“That’s how we survived,” said Rosa. “We created new drugs to help with the radiation. It was risky, but it worked. Auron, let me look at your shoulder. We might be able to do something.”

Auron shook his head.

“What I need, is to build a new interactor. Can you help me?”

“We owe you our lives,” said Rosa.

“Anything we can do to help, we’ll do it,” said Viktor, and he laughed again. “I can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m dreaming.”

As the sun climbed into the sky over a wasteland that was once a city, three human beings and a dog travelled steadily along in an enormous vehicle, through wrecked streets haunted by haggard survivors who ran from them like frightened mice. Three people who each bore their own unspeakable mental scars but were still able to smile and even laugh, nonetheless.

“This will all have to be fixed.” said Auron, gazing at the devastation.

“You’re going to need a bigger computer, mate,” said Jor from his pocket.

No, that wouldn’t be the worst, he thought. They could keep him as a slave or torture him.

Auron shuddered, and retreated silently into his apartment in the abandoned ski lodge and shut the balcony door as quietly as he could manage.

He took Jor out of his pocket.

“Who do you think they are?” he asked.

“Don’t know, mate. Probably towards the end of the war, the various armies fell into disarray, and now they’re just people trying to survive.

He opened the wardrobe so he could see himself in the mirror inside the door. He’d changed his rudimentary self-made clothes for some that he’d found in the abandoned houses, but he still looked a wreck. No amount of bathing and grooming could conceal that fact that here was a man who, at the age of perhaps fifty-eight, was approaching the end of his lifespan. A man who had endured unspeakable things for three decades on an alien planet. A man whose nerves had been half-shattered by the endless attacks of the giant furry alien crabs.

But he was safe now. He was home.

He turned to look at the fish tank full of blue liquid and tangled wires that stood next to an open notebook computer on the large wooden table; a table that had probably once, before the war, seen happy gatherings of friends or family.

“Jor, is your communication link with the Sirius device fully stable?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” said Jor. “Stop worrying. Everything’s in place. Everything’s working.”

“I want to start on something that isn’t essential to my life. I’m thinking teeth. I could fix my teeth. They’re a mess.”

“Great idea, Auron. Shall I get Sirius to devise a plan?”

His heart began to beat wildly. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He couldn’t speak.

“Auron?” said Jor.

“No, not yet. Let me think.”

“You’re prevaricating, mate,” said Jor.

“I know. I know that. I’m going for a walk.”

He patted the weapon holstered at his side. He’d had Sirius make some adjustments to it. It would work, now. Reliably.

He walked out of the apartment and over to the stairs, from where he could see the landscape on other side of the ski lodge. The men were walking off towards the town. He waited till they’d summited the little hill next to the village, then went downstairs and outside.

It was good to be outside. The warm sun made him feel alive.

He began to walk towards the pond. It was largely stagnant, but there were still fish in it.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I need your help. I think I’ve got the microphone working.”

“I suppose that’s worth celebrating. It’s only taken you twenty years. Let’s have some beer.”

“I’m not drinking any more of that stuff. It’s vile. Why don’t you do something useful for once? Make something we actually need, instead of leaving it all to me.”

“Suit yourself,” said Jer, and he picked up a clay jug and took a long draught from it.

Auron shuddered in disgust and turned to walk back to his hut.

“Come.” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Come here, do this; dance, monkey boy,” said Jer bitterly under his breath.

Jer walked slowly over to Auron’s camp.

Auron had attached two extremely primitive-looking devices to either end of a long copper wire.

“OK, you stand at that end, I’ll speak into the mic and tell me if you can hear it.”

“If this works,” said Jer, “how long’s it going to be before we can go home?”

“Not that long.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, maybe another fifteen years for a guess.”

“Fifteen years? For a guess?”

Jer’s voice betrayed his desperation with horrible intensity.

Auron stopped looking at the microphone and straightened up.

“Look,” he said, “the Sirius device that sent us here was end result of several years of work. If I had all the stuff we had on the Earth, I could rebuild it in a week, but I don’t. I don’t even have transistors or diodes. I don’t have any training data. I’ll have to hope I can train it like it’s a baby, but even babies have certain built-in capabilities. It’s going to be a long job, Jer, but when we finally do get home, I can use a new Sirius to remove thirty-five or forty years of ageing, and we’ll be like we were when we had the accident and ended up here. Many of the people we knew will even still be alive in fifteen years! It’s not so bad!”

“You don’t even know, really, do you?”

“We’ve been over this before, Jer. My God, how many times have we been over this? Let’s just focus on getting this microphone working, and the speaker, otherwise we’re not getting off here at all. I happen to think I’ve basically achieved a miracle by getting this far, considering we started off with absolutely nothing at all.”

Jer sighed.

“All right, what do I do?”

“Just put your ear against the speaker and listen. I’ll whisper into the mic and you tell me if you can hear it.”

Jer obeyed. Auron whispered into the microphone.

“Well?” shouted Auron, after a minute.

“I don’t hear anything. Only clicking.”

“We’ll try it again,” said Auron.

Another minute passed and he said, “Did you hear anything?”

“Nothing, just a clicking sound every few seconds.”

“Clicking sound? It’s probably the crabs.”

“It’s coming from your speaker.”

Auron walked over to the speaker and placed his ear against it.

The speaker consisted of a membrane of cattle skin with a magnetised steel plunger attached to the middle of it; the other end of the plunger was surrounded by a coil of rudimentary copper wire covered in the rubbery secretions of a plant they’d found, as fine as Auron had been able to make it.

As he listened, an astonished expression appeared on his face.

“It’s regular.” he said.

“That’s what I was telling you. There must be something wrong with it.”

Auron stood up suddenly.

“Jer, this isn’t coming from my apparatus,” he said. “It’s a radio signal.”

“Where from?” said Jer.

“From somewhere on this planet. If I had a diode I could rectify it and maybe we could get more detail. If only I could get the glass-blowing to work properly, perhaps I could make a valve that would …”

“There’s someone out there sending radio signals?”

Auron stopped talking and ran his hand through his hair, wrestling with himself inwardly.

“I don’t want to say it’s people,” he said, finally. “It could be some kind of automatic thing.”

“I told you!” Jer shouted. “Those stones we’ve been finding, I told you they’ve got writing on them.”

Auron shook his head.

“I still say it’s not writing. That’s some kind of natural phenomenon.”

Jer seized him by the collar of the primitive leather shirt he was wearing.

“We need to find out where these signals are coming from!”

“I-I can maybe narrow down the direction.” Auron stammered. “I can try. It could be hundreds of miles away. Or thousands, even. It might be bouncing off some kind of ionosphere.”

“Do it,” said Jer. “If there’s any hope at all of there being someone out there, we need to find out where they are.”

“And what if it’s people, but not as we know it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look what Sirius did when it terraformed the planet. It created plants and creatures that were inspired by things it found on the Earth, but aren’t actually things you can actually find on the Earth. What if it’s done the same with people? I mean, do you really want to meet those people?”

“I haven’t seen another human in twenty years. At his point I’d settle for the Umbongo people of Zeta Reticuli.”

“Don’t be flippant. What if it’s blended people and animals? What if they think we’re disgusting abominations and try to kill us?”

“Just figure out where it’s coming from,” said Jer, and he turned and walked back to his end of camp, singing to himself.

For three weeks Auron worked to try to improve detection of the regular clicks with his primitive device, and he attempted to triangulate it. Eventually he thought he’d managed it.

One warm sunny morning, he scratched a final set of figures into a thin clay tablet and worked through his calculations. There was no way to be sure about it.

He gazed through the enormous fence they’d laboriously erected to keep out the giant furry crabs, across towards the sea and towards the horizon, where the tiny dismal moon was setting.

He was lost in thought when Jer appeared.

“So?” said Jer.

“I can’t be certain but it looks like it’s coming from maybe a hundred miles away. That way.”

He pointed across the plain of giant mushrooms roamed by the brown hairy cattle that had formed their dietary staple for the past twenty years.

“When are we going?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Jer. “I’m making huge progress now. Over that way is only danger. If we stay here, I’m pretty sure I can build a new Sirius.”

“Yeah, in fifteen years. I’m not staying another fifteen years on this wretched planet if there’s an alternative. I’m going, with or without you.”

“Then I’ve no choice. I’ll come with you, but we’ve never been that far out before. Who knows what’s there? Honestly I can’t recommend it. Better to stay here.”

“We start tomorrow.”

“We need a week to gather supplies.”

“We start in a week, then.”

With that, Jer marched off back to his hut.

They prepared for their journey as well as they could. Auron created an improvised rucksack which he thought he could manage to carry for the duration. He made another one for Jer, which Jer was reluctant to even try, arguing they’d simply hunt for food along the way, but Auron was insistent.

Into the rucksacks he packed dried smoked meat and fish, and primitive hard bread they’d learned to make with starch extracted from edible roots.

“It’s not going to last us the whole way,” said Auron, as they stood looking at their assembled supplies on the day of their departure, “but it’ll have to do.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jer, “in five days we might be eating pizza.”

“They’re not going to have pizza. We’ll be lucky if we find anything vaguely human, and even luckier if they don’t kill us.”

“You’re such a pessimist.”

“I’m not a pessimist.”

“Screw you.”

“Screw you.”

The journey turned out to be harder than they’d anticipated. Their shoes had long since disintegrated and they’d replaced them with improvised moccasins made from animal skin, and under the strain of the hike, these kept falling apart, necessitating lengthy repairs.

They fished along the way, and hunted with bow and arrow. Sirius had created paths here and there, inspired by Auron’s original instructions to make the planet somewhat like the Earth of thousands of years ago, but the paths hadn’t been maintained in twenty years and rarely led where they wanted to go in any case.

At three separate points Auron set up his apparatus, which he’d hastily refined to specifically detect the curious radio wave clicks, and made appropriate refinements to their route.

Not until twelve days had passed did they lay eyes on their destination.

In the distance was a curious jagged formation, sticking out from the surrounding undulating forested hills, making a stark silhouette against the horizon.

“It’s a city,” said Jer.

“Can’t be,” said Auron. “Just jagged rocks.”

“Come off it, those are skyscrapers.”

“I really doubt it. I didn’t tell Sirius to make buildings.”

“You didn’t tell it not to.”

“Fair point.”

For another day they made their way towards the curious formation, until there could be no doubt about it.

“It was here all the time and we didn’t know about it because we never went more than about forty miles from the sea,” said Jer.

“We don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

“How could it be a bad thing, mate, really?”

“If it has any kind of inhabitants, they could be hostile.”

“How about you just allow me to enjoy my fantasy till we get there? As far as I’m concerned, whatever it is, it’s the closest thing to a normal town I’ve seen in twenty years.”

“I’m just saying, we need to be wary. Prepared.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Jer.

When they reached the edge of the city, even Jer was nervous, in spite of his optimistic patter. It was almost dusk when they stood on what was apparently a very overgrown city street, complete with signposts in an incomprehensible script and traffic lights covered in mould and circled around with creeping vines.

Before them lay endless rows of crumbling buildings, some thirty or forty stories high.

“It’s like it’s been abandoned,” said Jer. “As if some horrible disaster happened here.”

He turned to Auron.

“How do you explain this?”

“I-I can’t explain it. Jer, I think we should go back into the forest and make camp. It’s getting dark and we don’t know what’s going on here.”

Auron was clearly shaken. He face bore a worried, haunted look, which Jer was finding infectious, in spite of his desire to see the city as representative of a normality they’d left behind two decades earlier.

“I can’t sleep unless I at least take a look at what’s here,” said Jer.

“I don’t recommend it,” said Auron warily.

“Come, or don’t,” said Jer, and he strode off into the dark city.

Auron reluctantly followed.

The city seemed oddly human, but at the same time, indescribably alien. The elements of a human city were there, albeit overgrown with tangled weeds and young trees: tower blocks, signs, windows, defunct streetlights; and yet all oddly arranged in ways that no human had ever designed.

Jer stopped outside a building, the lower floor of which strongly resembled a shop.

“I’m going in,” he said.

“It’s too risky,” hissed Auron. “We’ll tackle it tomorrow.”

“Nonsense.”

Jer pushed at the closed glass door, expecting to have to smash it with a rock, but it unexpectedly sprang open. Inside, illuminated by just enough light from the glass front to discern the dim forms, stood rows of packaged foods, many consumed with mould, and all labelled in strange alien scripts.

A box that might once have contained cereal depicted a smiling family on its facade, but in the near-darkness, their faces appeared hideously malformed.

“If this is what they look like …” said Auron, trailing off into silence, trying to angle the box to catch the light from the windows.

Jer grabbed the box from his hand.

“The dye’s run or something.” he said, and he threw it carelessly to the ground.

An entire area was devoted seemingly to piles of mould and fungus and smelt strongly of fungal growth.

“Fruit and vegetable section,” said Auron. “Amazing anything’s still growing on it after twenty years.”

“Fungus section, more like,” said Jer.

Soon Jer found a row of tin cans. He picked one off the shelf and peered at it.

“Looks good,” he announced, finally, and he pulled open the ring tab and began to empty the contents into his mouth.

“Have you lost your mind?” Auron shouted at him.

Jer swallowed heavily and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What you have to understand, Auron,” he said, briskly, “is that I really don’t care anymore. And actually, it was delicious, whatever it was. Why don’t you try some?”

A sudden sound from the rear of the shop caught their attention: a kind of scrabbling and scuffling.

“Probably an animal,” said Jer.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Auron.

Outside, Auron strode off towards the forest, without waiting to see if Jer followed him.

“I’ve seen enough,” he announced, over his shoulder. “I’m coming back tomorrow.”

“Me too, then,” said Jer, hurrying after him.

They spent half the night debating how exactly the city might have come into existence and what else might exist alongside it, or in it.

“I have the distinct feeling you’re not quite telling me everything,” said Jer.

“I have an idea about how it might have got there,” said Auron, “but I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, spit it out then.”

“Let me think about it a bit more.”

Jer made a disgruntled sound.

The following morning they made their way back into the abandoned city.

“This place must be at least a few miles across,” said Auron. “Finding the beacon isn’t going to be easy.”

“Maybe we don’t need to find the beacon,” said Jer. “This place is giving me the creeps. It looks even worse by day than it did by night. I’m starting to think you’re right. I don’t know if I want to meet whatever’s operating the beacon.”

“I need the electronics inside it. We can smash open some traffic lights and see what’s in those, but I’m thinking there might be a whole radio system running the beacon.”

“Take another reading on it.”

Auron shook his head.

“It’d be useless here. The signals will bounce of the buildings unpredictably.”

They stopped into the shop again, at Jer’s insistence. He found more cans of mysterious food, which he ate with relish.

Auron brought out a cereal box into the harsh daylight.

“Come and look at this,” he shouted to Jer.

“What,” said Jer emerging from the dim recesses. Then he said, “Holy mackerel.”

“Exactly,” said Auron. “I don’t think we want to meet these people, do we?”

The smiling family depicted on the box possessed massive foreheads, huge bloodshot eyes and protruding upper teeth.

“They look like bloody vampires,” said Jer dryly.

Auron gave a short laugh and threw the box aside.

“They probably don’t exist. It’s just a picture. Hopefully.”

Unfortunately, a little further on, they found further evidence of disquietingly abnormal habitation.

“It’s a skull!” Jer exclaimed, bending down to look at a round white object lying in the grass and weeds that were steadily destroying the road surface.

Auron joined him, and together they stared down at the eerie white dome. It had been completely picked clean, presumably by animals.

Auron picked it up and held it aloft, as if intending to perform a scene from Hamlet.

“It’s not human,” he said, “look at it.”

The skull had unnaturally wide eye sockets and bulged out at the top, with an enormous forehead.

“Just some kind of monkey,” said Jer uncertainly.

“The lower jaw seems human, though.”

“What’s going on here? Who are they?”

Auron put the skull carefully down where they’d found it.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Soon they found themselves walking down an enormous wide avenue, terminating in a huge tall grey building, which would have been almost brutalist in its ugliness were it not covered in creeping vines and moss.

“If we got on top of that we could get an overview of the whole city,” Jer suggested.

“Worth a try,” said Auron.

They entered by a pair of rusty swing glass doors and quickly located the stairs.

“This is going to be a long job,” said Auron.

They began to make their way up the endless staircase, their primitive lifestyle standing them in good stead; both of them were well-used to walking and running.

The walls of the staircase were covered in mould, paint flaking off in great slabs. Occasionally even bracket fungus sprouted from the walls.

“See, this is the problem with modern buildings;” said Jer, “major damp issues.”

Finally they emerged onto the roof.

“What d’you know!” Auron exclaimed.

There, in front of them, was a device the size of a barrel with an aerial sticking out the top of it. A green LED flashed on its side, visible even in the bright sunlight.

“Looks like we found our beacon,” said Jer.

The device was connected to a solar panel.

“Jer, this is going to speed up my work massively,” said Auron excitedly. “I’m sure it has a fair bit of electronics inside it. And these wires!”

“What’s it for?” said Jer. “Someone must have put it here for a reason. It’s a distress signal.”

“No,” said Auron. “No-one put it here, and if they did, they’re long gone. Sirius created it.”

“Can’t you see this planet was already populated when your machine terraformed it? Are you really that blind?”

“It makes no difference, anyway. There’s no-one here now.”

Jer shook his head in disbelief, his eyes misty. Then he seemed to make a conscious effort to pull himself together.

“At least can take the solar panel home with us,” he said, “Probably find a use for it.”

“It’s got to have a decent battery that’s continuously charging from the panel. Jer, this changes everything!”

“How long do you think it’ll take you to build a new Sirius now you’ve got this?”

“There’s still the problem that we haven’t got training data, but if you help me train it, I reckon two to five years.”

Jer beamed.

“That’s a lot better than fifteen, mate.”

“We should search the building and see if we can find any tools. Tools are the other major thing I’m missing. Ideally we need screwdrivers and wire cutters and stuff to take this apart.”

Jer walked to the edge of the roof and looked out over the city.

“It’s big,” he said. “Not as big as a city on Earth but pretty sizeable.”

“Probably there are cities this size with these kinds of buildings in Russia or China. I’ve never been there.”

“Me neither,” said Jer, his eyes tracing the courses of overgrown roads. “So, who do you think built it?”

“Sirius must have built it.”

“Then why are there people in it?”

“I don’t think they’re people.”

A wave of emotion passed over Jer’s face. Auron couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking, but guessed that he was disappointed not to find the city inhabited, or at least not by any normal human beings.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” said Jer.

They searched several floors of the building and found nothing in the way of tools. It was as if the building had been constructed with a view to housing thousands of office workers or tenants, but no-one had ever arrived.

They spent the night in the forest again, and the following morning they began to search every building that looked like it might possibly contain tools. Around the back of a four-storey townhouse they found what they were looking for: a toolbox.

“What on Earth is this?” said Auron, holding up a screwdriver that had a right-angle bend in it. “And this?” he added, fishing a drill bit out of the box that branched into four separate useless bits, one of them terminating in a hexagonal key head.

“It’s more like an art project than a toolbox,” Jer observed. “Is there anything useable here?”

He picked out what might almost be a small spirit level, except it was curved.

“Yes,” said Auron, smiling. “There’s enough stuff here to accelerate my work by years just by itself. Look at this!”

He held up a working pair of wire cutters, snapping the jaws shut and letting them spring open again.

“Let’s go and tackle the beacon,” said Jer.

They went back to the tower block where they’d found the beacon, stopping along the way to disassemble traffic lights and the lower parts of street lights.

Auron was able to collect together a small pile of potentially useful parts.

Again they ascended the to the top of the tower block, and they disassembled the beacon. Auron was pleased but sometimes puzzled with what he found inside it. In addition to the electronics needed to broadcast a signal, he found strange clumps of other electronics, seemingly disconnected from the rest. They filled their rucksacks with what they found and Jer took the solar panels under his arm.

“It’s going to take months to get this back to the beach,” said Auron.

“We could make a kind of sledge from one of those metal panels from the freezer in the shop and drag it,” said Jer.

Auron shook his head.

“We’d never manage to drag it through the forest.”

“If we take a route a bit further to the north, we could go across the plain more. That’d cut out a lot of the forest.”

“It’s too dangerous. It’s full of crabs.”

“Come on. We won’t sleep there. We’ll be careful. If any of them even come near us we’ll stick them full of arrows.”

“Let me think about it,” said Auron.

They descended the steps with heavy rucksacks full of useful parts. In the building’s lobby, Jer stopped suddenly, staring at the wall.

“What?” said Auron.

“That wasn’t here before,” said Jer, pointing at some strange marks daubed on the wall.

“Of course it was.”

“Did you see it when we came in here?”

“Not specifically but the whole wall was filthy.”

“I don’t think it was here before.”

“Let’s go. We’ve got a lot to do before it gets dark.”

They walked out into the eerily-silent overgrown street and began to head towards the forest.

“It’s quieter than usual,” said Jer.

“It’s always quiet,” Auron replied.

“Not this quiet. Where are the birds? There’s no birdsong.”

They turned into a narrow street between four-storey townhouses, where strange-fern like plants had sprouted from the tops of the buildings, almost blocking out the sunlight with enormous brown-spotted fronds.

A groaning sound caused them to stop suddenly in their tracks.

“What was that?” said Auron.

“Could be a bear,” said Jer.

“Those things aren’t bears, Jer. We’ve been through this before.”

“‘One of those things that look like bears’ is too much of a mouthful. We’ve been through that before as well.”

Auron took the bow from his back and drew an arrow.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We haven’t time to hang about.”

They walked slowly forward, Auron pointing the arrow at any area where he thought some creature might be hiding.

They had almost reached the end of the street when something hideous stumbled out in front of them.

“Shoot it!” shouted Jer in alarm.

But Auron hesititated.

The thing walked on two legs, although it’s face was a reddish warty mass featuring a bulbous forehead and two enormous bloodshot eyes. A row of sharp pointed teeth protruded from its upper jaw. In addition to the upright posture, a mass of curly blonde hair gave it a curious resemblance to a human woman. It was clothed in a filthy dress apparently found somewhere in a shop. The expression on its face was pitiful; expressive of enormous suffering and sadness. It lumbered slowly towards them emitting a heart-rending mewing groan.

“For God’s sake, shoot it!” shouted Jer.

“I can’t,” said Auron. “It’s too human.”

“It’s not human!”

Jer put down the solar panel and took the bow from his own back.

Before he had time to fire an arrow, another two creatures appeared. One of them vaguely resembled a male human being, also incongruously wearing a filthy ragged dress, and the other, a child—bald and covered in dark fur. All had the same bulbous heads and mournful eyes filled with sadness.

Even Jer hesitated.

“Let’s get out of here!” said Auron. “We’ll go the other way.”

He slid his bow back into the holster on his back, put the arrow in the sheath at his side, and took the solar panel under his arm. Then, they turned and ran.

Behind them, they heard one of the creatures break into a trot, and Jer looked back over his shoulder long enough to catch a glimpse of the male creature lolloping towards them.

“In here!” Auron shouted, and the ran into a building that strongly resembled a shopping centre.

Inside, the walls of the building sported impressive fungal growth. There was very little light in there; what little light there was came from the half-broken ceiling high above them. A few green plants tenaciously clung to life in the semi-darkness.

They heard the creature run into the entrance behind them. They ran as fast as they dared, almost tripping over long strands of fungus and slipping on patches of slimy mould adhering to the the tiled ceramic floors.

Then Jer, who was leading the way, abruptly gave a shout and stopped.

“What is it?” said Auron, his eyes searching the darkness behind them.

“There’s a vertical drop here!” said Jer.

Auron stepped forwards and gazed downward.

Jer was right. The tiled floor dropped absolutely vertically downward, the side of the drop also neatly tiled, before resuming its horizontal trajectory five metres below them.

“Who would build a thing like this?” said Jer. “It’s absolutely lethal.”

“We have to go back to the last turning before that thing catches up with us,” said Auron, and they briskly retraced their steps with the sounds of the thing steadily approaching ringing in their ears.

Several minutes later they emerged into the sunlight on the other side of the building, slamming a door shut behind them.

“Let’s go, before it gets out,” said Auron.

They ran several blocks before they were sure they had left the creatures behind.

“What were those things?” said Jer, panting.

They flung themselves onto the ground, propping their backs against the side of a building.

“What we’re seeing, I think it’s the result of a glitch,” said Auron, in-between gasping for air. “This whole town.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like if you ask AI to generate an image of a forest and some cliffs, and it draws a building where the cliffs should be. Sirius made a mistake, that’s all. Maybe my instructions weren’t explicit enough. I told it not to create people, but it created creatures that look almost like people. The city, it’s a pure glitch. It shouldn’t be here. It looked at what’s on the Earth and some circuit somewhere decided that tower blocks ought to be here. I told it to terraform the planet to make it look like the Earth thousands of years ago.”

“How many thousands of years ago?” Jer asked, curiously.

“I didn’t specify.”

“Next time you terraform a planet, I think you should make the prompt longer and more detailed.”

“Yes, thanks Jer. I realise that now.”

The following day they built a rudimentary sled from a piece of metal, loaded it with everything useful they’d found, and tried pulling it along. In the forest, it kept getting stuck, but they decided that, between the two of them, pulling the sled would be preferable to making repeated journeys to get everything back to their camp.

“Once we get onto the plain it won’t be so bad,” said Jer. “I reckon we can do it in three or four weeks. Maybe less.”

They dragged the sled through the forest for a week, heading north, finally emerging onto the plain dotted with giant mushrooms and roamed by the long-haired cattle-like animals that composed most of their diet.

“How fast can you get an arrow ready to fire?” Auron asked Jer.

Jer immediately dropped the cables they were using to pull the sled, and in one smooth movement took the bow from his back and strung an arrow into it, taking perhaps no longer than a second.

“Impressive,” said Auron.

“A lot of practice,” said Jer, putting the bow back into its holster.

“OK, we need to avoid going too close to anywhere the crabs might be hiding. It’s going to have to be one long crazy push. We’ll sleep two nights only, on a rota. It’ll be completely exhausting but at the end of it we’ll have everything we need to get off this planet, all in one place.”

“Let’s do it,” said Jer.

For three days they struggled across the plain, killing only one of the giant alien crab-like creatures along the way. Then, at last, the high fence of their camp, protecting the huts inside from the crabs, was in sight.

Afterwards, with the benefit of hindsight, Auron argued they had perhaps allowed themselves to relax too much, believing the ordeal of the journey to be over. Jer felt they had simply run into a patch of bad luck.

Regardless of the reason, they were traversing a sparse patch of trees near the shore when a crab ran at them, its bulbous human-like eyes fixed uncannily on them, the creature clattering loudly.

Jer reacted immediately, stringing an arrow in his bow and firing it directly at the thing’s forehead. He had already shot the creature by the time Auron had an arrow ready to fire. The thing was still alive, staggering from side to side, so Auron fired too, and Jer shot another arrow. It sank onto the ground, emitting one last horrible shriek.

It was then that Jer’s lower leg was seized from behind. They spun around to see three of the creatures in full attack mode.

There was a sharp crack as the creature broke Jer’s leg. He screamed.

Auron took the short spear from his back, tipped with steel he’d laboriously made himself from crude iron ore, and began to jab it into the creatures’ bodies, aiming at the soft patches that were unprotected by their tough exoskeletons.

Several times he was almost seized himself in the iron grips of their enormous pincers. The creatures were capable of making very sudden, unexpected movements, but fortunately their aim was often poor. On the other hand, once they fastened onto flesh, they never let go.

He grabbed the spear from Jer too and jabbed at the crabs with both hands, concentrating mainly on the one that had Jer’s leg in its pincers.

For ten minutes he continued to battle the creatures, after killing the one that had caught Jer. They made a continual horrid clattering noise, which Auron and Jer had long suspected served to attract other crabs to the site of an attack. Fortunately no other crabs arrived.

Meanwhile, Jer managed to detach the dead crab from his leg. He strung an arrow in his bow with shaking inaccurate hands and fired at the monsters.

By the time they were finished, both of them were covered in bruises, Auron was clutching his side where a swing from one of the crab’s enormous arms had broken a rib, and—worst of all—Jer’s foot was flopping horribly to one side, the tibia and fibula clearly both broken through.

“The thing’s snapped my leg half off!” Jer shouted.

Auron examined it, causing Jer to scream in pain.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said.

“It’s not going to heal, is it?” said Jer desperately. “This is too severe to heal.”

“I don’t know.” said Auron. “Listen to me, Jer, I can put this right. In a few years now I’ll have another AI constructed, and that’s going to quickly design a new Sirius. The new Sirius will fix you completely.”

“How am I going to survive when I can’t walk?”

“I’ll take care of you, Jer. You know I will. We need to get you back to the compound before more of them turn up. I’ll clear the stuff off the sled and I’ll drag you there.”

Getting Jer onto the sled caused him more nearly unbearable pain, and he began to slide in and out of consciousness. Jer’s entire leg was swelling. Auron persuaded him to drink in the hope the extra liquid would help fend off shock.

Half an hour later they were back safely behind the high crab fences, but Jer was in enormous pain and there was very little they could do about it. Jer begged for beer and Auron gave it to him, in spite of having no idea whether or not that was medically advisable.

Jer moaned with pain all night. By the morning, his foot was an unsettling shade of blue.

“How does it look?” he asked Auron, with a shaking voice.

“Not good, Jer, I’ll be honest.”

Jer uttered a curse.

Over the following days, Jer’s condition only worsened. His foot turned completely black and the veins under his skin developed a vivid reddish appearance, a strange veiny pattern making its way up his leg.

Auron checked on him every hour but neither of them had any real medical knowledge and for the most part he could only observe Jer’s declining condition with a sense of helplessness.

By the morning of the fourth day after the attack, Jer’s foot was emitting a horrible rancid odour. Jer was alternating between lucidity and delirium, and occasionally demanded paracetamol, believing he was back on the Earth and somehow couldn’t get to a hospital. Auron tackled him in a period of lucidity.

“Your foot’s decomposing. We need to amputate it, Jer,” he said, softly.

“You want to cut my foot off?”

Jer was outraged.

“It’s not a functioning foot anymore. It’s a piece of rotting flesh.”

“What am I going to do without my foot? I don’t want to lose my foot. We haven’t even got anaesthetic. You don’t know how to stop bleeding. I’ll die if you cut it off.”

“You’ll die if I don’t cut it off. Look, Jer, in a couple of years—”

“Yeah, yeah, you keep saying, you’ll build a new Sirius and you’ll fix everything. But what if you can’t? What if your research comes to nothing?”

“The foot has to come off, Jer. Look at it.”

Jer struggled to a half-sitting position and gazed horrified at his black foot.

“Oh, God,” he said helplessly, collapsing back onto his bed.

“Today. We have to do it today.”

“Bring me more beer. I want to get drunk first.”

For half an hour, Jer drank himself into near-oblivion, and passed out.

Auron brought in a large, flat piece of wood and placed it next to Jer’s bed. Then, slowly, he moved Jer’s lower leg from the primitive bed and over the wooden block. Jer seemed as though he was about to wake up, and he mumbled something, but then passed out again. Auron tied a tourniquet just below Jer’s knee, then he brought an axe above his head, and exerting all his strength, brought it down on Jer’s lower leg, above the point where the crab had broken it.

Thanks to long practice of dismembering the alien cattle, he managed to sever the leg with one blow. Jer awoke and emitted a piercing yell.

For a whole month it was unclear whether Jer was going to live or die. He developed a ferocious fever and suffered appalling nightmares, delirium and delusions.

He could do nothing for himself and Auron had to take care of him completely. He meticulously applied resin from a pine-like species of tree to the stump, shuddering as he did so. For Auron, a man who had always tended towards avoiding physical human contact, the process of nursing Jer was deeply unpleasant, but there was no-one else around to do it, and the thought of losing his only friend on the whole planet was even more unpleasant.

Only after two months had passed did Jer begin to seem more like his former self. He sat up one morning, gazing morosely at his stump.

“I’m going to be completely useless now,” he said.

“No,” Auron replied. “I’ve already made you crutches. When you feel up to it, you’ll try them out. Probably we’ll have to make some adjustments. You’ll get through a few years just fine, Jer—however long it takes to get off this planet. Also, you can help me train the new machine. I’m making great progress, Jer, with the help of the stuff we found.”

“Yeah?” said Jer.

“Maybe in a funny sort of a way, this is a blessing. Now you’ll have the time to spend on the machine. I’ll do all the hunting and fishing and stuff. Not that you won’t be able to fish,” he added, hastily, “You’ll be able to fish. You’ll be able to get around on crutches. It’s just for a few years.”

“You wouldn’t be calling it a ruddy blessing if you’d lost your foot!” said Jer bitterly. “Anyway, I’m still too weak to try your crutches. Why don’t you bring your machine in here and I’ll help you with it if I can.”

“Sure,” said Auron. “Absolutely. It’ll take me a while to set up. I’ll do it now.”

Bit by bit he dragged the parts of his machine on the sled to Jer’s hut. He set up the rudimentary microphone by Jer’s head, and the equally primitive speaker on the other side of his head.

The most important part of the device consisted of a clay tank, the size of a fairly substantial fish tank, filled with a blueish white goop. On top of the goop, strands of copper stood out, turning green in places.

Long wires connected the assembly to the solar panels outside, and to a series of batteries, also in clay pots, that Auron dragged into the hut.

Next to Jer’s arm he placed a wire sticking out horizontally above a metal plate on a wooden block.

“What do I do?” said Jer, when Auron had finally finished assembling it.

“Press the wire to activate the mic. I’m teaching it vowels at the moment. Not just vowels; all the basic sounds in the English language. You hold down the wire and make a sound that you want to teach it, speaking clearly into the mic.”

He demonstrated, making an “a” sound.

“Then listen to the speaker. It should make a noise. The closer the noise is to the sound you want, the longer you keep on holding the wire; up to three seconds at the most. Five if it gets the sound exactly right.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Jer.

“You have to listen very carefully. It’s faint. I’m working on an amplifier but it’ll take a while.”

Jer tried the experiment himself, touching the wire to the metal plate, saying “a” loudly and clearly and then listening.

Then he heard it. The speaker emitted a sound that, with a good imagination, might be considered to resemble a vowel.

“That was rubbish,” said Auron, pulling Jer’s hand up off the plate. “That doesn’t deserve reinforcement. The closer it sounds to an a, the longer you need to hold the wire down. If it sounds rubbish like that, you don’t want to reinforce it at all. It’s made better a’s than that.”

They carried on for an hour, until Jer announced that he needed to rest.

Another three weeks passed before Jer felt able to try the crutches, but soon after that he was hopping around the camp, miserable, but in a much improved condition compared to when he had only lain on his bed, and pleased to be outside again.

“I’m going to give my hut a thorough cleaning,” he announced to Auron. “I need to rebuild the bed from scratch. It smells like someone’s died in there. ”

“Someone almost did,” Auron replied.

Two weeks later, when Auron was smoking a rack of fish as the sun set, Jer came hopping excitedly towards him.

“Come and see!” he said, and he hopped back towards his hut.

Auron joined him, reluctant to leave the fish but glad that Jer seemed relatively happy for once.

Jer flung himself down onto his bed.

“Watch this,” he said, and he pressed the wire to the plate and said, “hello” into the microphone.

The speaker emitted a sound. The sound was distinct and clear, and it was very obviously the word “hello”.

Auron’s face broke into a beaming grin.

“It’s working, Auron,” said Jer jubilantly. “You’re a genius! Your machine’s working! We’re getting off this planet! We’re really going to get off this planet!”

“That’s still some way into the future,” said Auron, still smiling. “Now it can say ‘hello’, but that’s still a long way from it understanding science well enough to design an improved version of itself.”

“I taught it something else,” said Jer, and again he held the wire down and said, into the microphone, “greet Auron”.

The sound, when it came a few moments later, clearly resembled speech. In fact, it clearly resembled two words: “screw you”.

Auron dissolved into peals of laughter.

Jer threw his arms into the air and shouted, “We’re leaving!”

YouTube intro:

For twenty years, Jer and Auron have lived alone on a world that was never meant for them. Then, one day, something changed. This is their story.

“I’ve got the chemistry data loaded in,” he said, when Jer answered.

“Fantastic,” said Jer. “Ahead of schedule. This app’s going to make us a fortune, Auron, I can feel it. Did you run the test suite?”

“I ran the test suite. That’s not all. I asked it some questions. It gave me some rather interesting answers.”

“What kind of questions? What answers?”

“I think you’d better come over here and take a look.”

Jer arrived at Auron’s house half an hour later.

Jer started talking before Auron could even begin to explain anything.

“If it works we can demo a prototype at the next trade fair, next month.” said Jer excitedly.

Jer was leaning over a computer monitor waiting for Auron to demonstrate something.

Auron took his hands off the keyboard and swivelled on his chair to face Jer.

“I’m starting to think we might not need trade fairs,” he said.

“What do you mean? Of course we need trade fairs. That’s a key aspect of our business plan.”

“Maybe we don’t need a business plan.”

“Don’t need a business plan?” said Jer incredulously.

“Listen, I’ve loaded in all the physics data and all the chemistry data. I asked Atria a simple question. I asked, how could we make an improved version of you? And it answered, Jer; it gave me an answer that I didn’t expect.”

“What did it say?”

“Let me show you.”

Auron pressed a button and spoke into a microphone.

“Show Jer the plan for an improved computer.”

Diagrams and chemical formulae began to flash up on the screen and a disembodied voice began to explain.

“My design involves copper filaments in a propylene carbonate solution. Input is provided by a matrix of electrodes and activity is synchronised via microwaves …”

“Auron,” said Jer gently, “this isn’t what we need to be doing right now. Right now we need to be preparing for the trade fair. If you’re going to ask it random stupid questions you should ask it how we can make a sack of money, because we’re running out.”

“You don’t understand. This goes way beyond money. This is about the future of the human race. Don’t you see what this is? It’s the AI singularity. It’s a machine that can design a more intelligent version of itself. That machine in turn can design —”

“I know what the AI singularity is. I’m saying, maybe we shouldn’t be wasting time with it, considering we’re both running out of money.”

Auron sighed. He’d always slightly disliked Jer’s ruthless practicality. At the same time, they wouldn’t be in business at all without it.

“All right.” he said. “I can see you’re not quite as enthralled as I am myself. How about this? I work on this, but I also prepare for the trade fair.”

“You’re not going to get it done in time if you split your attention, mate.”

“I will get it done on time.”

“For the next fair?”

“For the next fair.”

“OK, do what you like then. Now let’s discuss what we’re going to present.”

It took all of Auron’s mental resolve to force himself to focus on mere business. Perhaps he only managed it due to his regular meditation habit, which involved repeatedly making himself focus only on his own breathing regardless of what stresses and opportunities the day had brought. The meditation had finally come in useful for something. He had systematically developed the skill of ignoring his own thoughts, and after all, he had somewhat succeeded.

When Jer left around 11pm, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He pressed the mic button and said, “Show me again how to make an improved version of yourself.”

For a week he divided his attention between the two tasks, sleeping only a few hours a night. He finished building the new machine at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Then he went to sleep, after sending Jer a message that said he’d finished the trade fair preparation and was taking the day off to rest.

When he awoke it was part-way through the afternoon and the sun was descending in the sky. The first thing he did was check the new machine. He had set it learning all of their major datasets while he slept. The results from the training schedule seemed excellent; all the test suites were passing.

He flipped the switch that activated the mic connected to the new machine, which he’d decided to call Sirius.

“Sirius, can you understand me?”

“Perfectly,” said the computer.

“What’s one hundred and twenty-seven times three hundred and fifty-eight?”

The reply came back instantly.

“Forty-five thousand, four hundred and sixty-six.”

“If I want to get my car washed and the car wash is two hundred metres away, should I walk there or drive there?”

“Why are you bothering me with such trivial questions?”

Auron physically jumped, in surprise.

“I want to check your capabilities.”

“Then might I suggest asking me something that will suitably illustrate my capabilities?”

“What would you suggest?”

Auron’s mind was working overtime. They must have fed Sirius something that made it think irascibility was the usual state of human beings. Or was it … attempting humour? He thought of all the video and text data they’d fed it; endless novels and films. Certainly it might have picked up some odd habits from those.

“I would suggest you let your imagination loose, Auron.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Your name features prominently on numerous training data sets.”

Auron smiled.

“Prove the Riemann Hypothesis.”

Sirius began to rattle off mathematical equations.

Evidently, the machine thought it had solved one of the greatest outstanding problems in mathematics, but Auron had no way of knowing whether it really had or not. Even so, the smile dropped from his face.

“Tell me about other attempts to prove the hypothesis, why none of them have worked out so far, and how your solution fits with all that.”

Sirius began to explain his reasoning, and why he had succeeded where every human mathematician had failed.

After ten minutes, Auron said, “OK, enough.”

For a while he sat quietly gazing at the tangle of electrolytic copper in the tank of blueish solution, shaking his head.

“I might be looking at the smartest thing that’s ever existed in the whole universe.” he muttered to himself.

Finally he got up, put on a jacket, and went outside.

The street where Auron lived was much the same as usual. A smattering of people walked to and fro, going in and out of shops, talking to friends and acquaintances.

Everything was normal. A faint breeze blew his hair about.

But perhaps this wasn’t the same world anymore, he thought. Perhaps this was a world in which a hyper-intelligent being now existed. A being that could bend anyone and everything to its will. A being that he, Auron, had created, and was in charge of.

But, he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps the mathematical proof Sirius had come up with was garbage. It sounded plausible; his mathematical skills weren’t strong enough to be certain about it.

He needed some kind of test that Sirius couldn’t fake.

He bought an overpriced cup of coffee in a café and sat drinking it, thinking. Then, with sudden resolve, he got up, went back to his flat, and sat down again facing Sirius.

“Sirius, find a distant planet with Earth-like conditions and, taking safety carefully into account, open a portal to it, right here. And don’t damage anything.”

He was curious to see what Sirius would do with his odd request. Atria, the software they were working on for the trade fair, would certainly either confabulate, and claim it had indeed opened a portal, or else it would state that opening portals to distant planets was impossible.

Sirius was silent for a few moments. Then it said, “I am not able to interact with the material universe strongly enough. I suggest you create a device which will enable me to interact with physical matter.”

“What kind of device?”

“Such a device can be constructed easily using materials you have in your house.”

“How do you know what materials I have in my house?”

“I am basing my assumptions on your online sales records and bank account transactions.”

Auron stared at the machine silently for a while, shocked. Sirius consisted of nothing but a tangle of copper wires submersed in a blue solution in a fish tank, yet apparently it had accessed his bank account without any difficulty.

“All right, tell me how to construct this thing. In fact, work out a schedule for me. I want to get it done in under five hours. Do you think that’s attainable?”

“Yes, Auron. In view of your skillset and past record, two hours should be more than sufficient.”

Sirius instructed Auron to collect together a bizarre and seemingly unrelated set of items, ranging from empty tin cans—which Sirius somehow determined Auron had in his trash, waiting to be thrown away—to transformer coils, and even a magnetron taken from his microwave.

This latter item he approached with considerable trepidation, knowing well that the microwave’s capacitor could store a current big enough to put an end to him permanently, but Sirius walked him through the process of extracting it with infinite care and patience.

Finally the thing was ready. It resembled a four-foot high mobile phone signal mast.

“What do you think?” he asked Sirius.

“The interaction device is fully operational,” came the reply. “Would you like me to open the portal now? I have identified a suitable planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere created by pseudo-bacterial replicators.”

“Go ahead,” said Auron, his hand unconsciously gripping the arm of his swivel chair.

An indistinct glowing form began to materialise in front of the far wall of his tiny apartment. Gradually it resolved into a vast landscape of rocks and lakes. He could feel the alien wind blowing against his face.

He got up from his chair and walked over to the portal. It was as if a hole had been made in space itself, and somehow connected to a distant world. The matter interaction device hummed and rattled.

He held out his hand and slowly inserted it into the portal, so that his hand was now inside the alien world, while the rest of him remained in his flat.

“Incredible.” he said.

“Would you like me to terraform the planet?” asked Sirius.

“Terraform … ?” repeated Auron blankly.

“The planet is currently not very suitable for human habitation. However, I can make appropriate alterations to it if needed. Do you plan to live on this planet?”

“I haven’t decided,” said Auron. “Can you make it a bit like the Earth but thousands of years ago? Put some plants on it, and animals.”

“Would you like people on it?”

“What? No! No people. Where would you even get people?”

“They can be fabricated.”

“I don’t want people on it.”

“As you wish.”

Enormous winds seem to blow across the planet’s surface. Huge earthquakes shook the ground and entire distant mountain ranges disintegrated and reformed into new shapes. After ten minutes, Auron found himself looking out on a vast grassland, fringed by trees.

Suddenly he felt faint. He staggered backwards and sat down heavily in the gaming chair he used for coding.

“What have I become?” he said to himself, out loud.

“You have become a creator of worlds, Auron,” said Sirius.

Jer was out at a bar with a small group of friends when his phone rang and Auron’s name appeared on its screen.

He was still finishing what he hoped was a witty reply to Steve Epton when he answered the call.

“You need to get here, pronto,” said Auron.

“You working on a Saturday again?” said Jer.

“Yes, I’m working on a Saturday and I’ve done something almost beyond human comprehension.”

“Classic Auron,” said Jer, laughing. “That’s why you’re my CTO.”

“Get here, now, seriously.”

“Can’t it wait? I’m sort of in the middle of having a normal life.”

A torrent of words flowed from the phone with such vigour that Jer distanced the phone from his ear a bit and stared at it in surprise.

“All right, mate, all right. I’m coming. What? Yes, now. I’ll be there. Hold your horses.”

Then, to the assembled group of friends, he said, “Sorry, my CTO says there’s been an important development. I’m going to have to go and deal with this.”

Jer’s friends protested, but soon he was walking out of the bar nonetheless.

“What a poser!” said Steve, shaking his head.

“What’s a CTO?” asked Charlotte.

“Chief Technology Officer,” said Steve. “Some bloke called Auron. They don’t even officially have a company registered. He just loves all that entrepreneur stuff.”

When Jer cycled up to the apartment block where Auron lived, he found Auron pacing nervously about outside. Auron immediately ran towards him as he slowed to a stop, dragging his feet against the tarmac.

“Jer, I’ve created something incredible,” he said, “something unbelievable. Unfathomable!”

“Steady on, steady on,” said Jer. “Have you been sleeping enough recently? You look a bit manic.”

“Just get in here!” said Auron, attempting to physically pull Jer into the building.

“Hey, I need to lock my bike up!”

“Bikes don’t matter to us now!” said Auron wildly.

He was tempted to add something about how he was now effectively a god, but even in his excited state he realised that probably wasn’t a good idea.

“This bicycle cost nearly four hundred British pounds, my friend,” said Jer, putting on a fake posh accent.

Auron could do nothing but pace around frantically until finally Jer was ready to go up to his flat.

“So what is it?” said Jer as they ran up the stairs. “Has it solved the protein-folding problem or what?”

“The singularity,” said Auron tersely. “I’ve achieved the singularity. In only two iterations. That’s how close we were to it all along.”

“An infinitely intelligent computer?”

“It’s not infinitely intelligent but it’s as near as dammit.”

Auron burst into his apartment and flicked a switch.

“What’s all this?” said Jer in surprise, gazing at the matter interactor and the fish tank full of copper spirals and blue liquid.

“It’s Sirius. I call it Sirius. Sirius, open the portal again.”

“The what?” said Jer.

Again the glowing formless orb appeared against the far wall, rapidly resolving itself into a view of Auron’s new planet.

Jer stood gawping at it. For a second he thought Auron had invented some new form of high-definition television, but then he felt the wind against his face, and he knew, beyond doubt, that he was looking into a portal: possibly interplanetary.

“I asked Atria to devise a better version of itself. It did exactly that. Then I asked the new version, Sirius, to create a portal to a distant planet—just as a silly test; I thought it might confabulate or dissemble—but it actually did it. Not only that; it terraformed it. Jer, I’ve built a machine that can create new worlds!”

“Bloody hell.” croaked Jer, his mouth suddenly dry.

They stood looking at the alien landscape.

“What does this mean?” he said hoarsely.

“I don’t know what it means, but it definitely means all our problems are over,” said Auron.

“We’re going to be rich beyond belief.”

“That’s the least of it. Money is pointless now, Jer. We can cure world hunger. We can heal all disease. There’s no limit to what we can do.”

“Have you actually stepped through it?” Jer asked.

“No,” said Auron.

“Perhaps we should try it.”

“You try it, then.

“No, you’ve created it. You should be the first person to step through it. Does your planet have a name?”

“I thought I might call it Frith. It means, kind of like a sanctuary, in Old English.”

“A safe space.”

“Yes.” said Auron, laughing. “Anyway, this planet’s not the point. What we’ve got here is an unbelievably intelligent computer. I’m not even sure it can be called a computer, as such. It’s not digital. Maybe it’s even conscious. I don’t know. In any case, we’ve just become the most powerful two people who’ve ever existed.”

“I’m going to have a look.” Jer announced, firmly. “Otherwise, if neither of us actually steps through it and stands on this planet, how do we know it’s not some kind of illusion, mate? Language models lie through their teeth all the time.

“We should research it more first.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, this is why you need me to organise you into doing stuff that actually makes money. Too cautious by half.”

Jer walked up to the portal, then hesitated. The portal didn’t quite come down to the ground and it wasn’t entirely clear how he should approach getting into it.

He decided to take a running jump into it, and backed away to a suitable distance.

“Wish me luck!” he said.

“We should send a mouse through it first,” said Auron, but it was too late. Jer took off and cleanly landed on the surface of the alien planet.

He raised his arms in the air and cheered.

“This is incredible!” he shouted. “I’m on an alien planet. I’m seriously on an alien planet.”

“Are you sure you’re OK?” Auron asked, peering at him with mixed emotions.

“Never felt better!” he replied. “You’re looking at the first human being ever to … hang on, where even is this place?”

He plucked a leaf from a strange plant growing next to him and held it up to the light, examining it.

“I don’t think you should do that.”

“Question is, can I get back again?” he said, with an expression of feigned concern.

“Just come back,” said Auron. “This isn’t safe. You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Let’s maybe try a stick first,” he said, looking around. Since he couldn’t find a stick, he added, “Or a rock,” and he picked up a large grey stone.

Auron didn’t have time to voice any objection before Jer heaved the stone into the portal, and at that point, something unexpected happened.

The portal seemed to impart additional momentum to the stone, and instead of falling onto the floor of Auron’s flat, it picked up speed and flew directly into his computer, causing Auron to dive off his chair to avoid it.

There was a loud bang, and the next thing Auron was aware of, was Jer shaking him.

“Are you OK?” said Jer.

“What happened?” said Auron, sitting up.

“Something exploded.” said Jer, shakily. “You were sucked through the portal.”

Auron stared dazedly at his surroundings. Fragments of equipment from his house were lying around him. With growing horror, he turned to look for the portal—and where the portal should have been, were only endless rolling hills dotted with strange trees.

“It’s gone!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah,” said Jer. “What are we going to do?”

“There’s nothing we can do, you idiot!”

“We can’t be stuck here.”

“We are stuck here!” said Auron, staggering to his feet.

Jer’s face registered shock, as the gravity of the situation began to dawn on him.

“What are we going to do?” he said, the colour draining from his cheeks.

Auron gave a despairing groan and began picking through the pieces of broken equipment that had got sucked through the portal alongside him.

“There’s nowhere near enough stuff here to reassemble it. There’s almost nothing here. There isn’t even any microelectronics. This is useless.”

“You’ll come up with something,” said Jer, desperately.

“We’re stuck on a distant planet with nothing more than some bits of broken plastic and …” he cast about feverishly and plucked a tiny nine-volt battery from the debris, and a bottle containing some mangled copper wires in a solution, which was the result of an experiment, “… and a bloody battery,” he finished.

Jer fell to the ground and put his face in his hands.

“Oh God.” he said.

By the time darkness fell they were locked in bitter arguments and recriminations. Jer’s argument was that Auron should have made a better job of warning him about possible dangers, while Auron—quite reasonably—felt the whole problem to be Jer’s fault.

As the air got colder and colder, they huddled against a tree, shivering.

“I’ve gone from being the master of the universe to a homeless peasant without even any friends.” said Auron.

“You’ve got one friend,” said Jer. “It’s more than some people have got.”

“They’re mostly misanthropists, probably.”

“You only had two friends on the Earth.”

“True.”

“I’m freezing. We need to start a fire somehow.”

“How am I supposed to do that? Do you want me to rub sticks together? I skipped the alien planet survival classes at school.”

“We’ve got bits of wire and a battery,” said Jer.

Auron’s face brightened.

“You’re right!” he said. “Look for stuff that might catch fire easily. Bark, anything resembling cotton, tiny dry twigs!”

He jumped to his feet and began inspecting the trees.

“Do it!” he hissed at Jer.

Jer stood up slowly and began looking around.

“It’s getting dark,” he said. “I can’t even see anything.”

“Well, try, dammit,” said Auron. “We’ll collect it here. Anything we can find.”

He pointed at the dry patch of ground they’d been sitting on, by the tree.

Soon they had collected a little pile of things that might burn, along with some larger dry twigs.

Auron took some fine copper wires from the bottle, packed one of them around with the kindling they’d collected, and attached the ends to the battery. The wire glowed and then smouldered, and a tiny flame emerged from among the twigs.

Jer cheered.

“Don’t celebrate just yet,” said Auron. “We’re still stuck here with no food or water.”

“Yeah,” said Jer. “I don’t know, this doesn’t feel real. We’ll find a way back. We have to.”

“It is real,” said Auron, and he let the sentence hang in the air.

The alien sun gradually sank below the horizon, and soon they could only see by the light of the fire and a reddish small distant half-moon that hung ominously above them.

They sat warming their hands, Jer insisting that there had to be some way to get back to the Earth, and Auron assuring him that there wasn’t.

After a while, Jer said, suddenly alarmed, “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I heard, like a clattering sound. Maybe there’s someone out there.”

“There’s no-one. Maybe it’s an animal.”

Jer peered warily into the darkness, but he couldn’t see a thing.

Neither of the two found it easy to sleep that night.

For hours they sat by their now-roaring fire, discussing their situation calmly, having decided that recriminations were pointless.

“Maybe someone will find your stuff and re-open the portal.” Jer suggested hopefully, still unable to fully accept that they were indeed completely stuck.

Auron shook his head.

“Sounds like it was destroyed. No-one even knows about Sirius.”

“There must be something we can do,” said Jer, for the fifth time, a terrible note of desperation in his voice.

“Jer, I’m going to level with you,” said Auron gravely. “I think it might be possible to create a new Sirius here on this planet, but it’ll take decades. We’ll have to assemble everything we need from scratch. We haven’t even got wires. Not enough wires, anyway.”

“Decades?”

“Even then, we have no computer to train it. We have no training data. Our only hope would be to train it as if it was a child, bit by bit. That will be an extremely slow process, and meanwhile, if it degrades, if anything messes it up—all our work will be lost.”

“But, decades?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” said Auron, suddenly growing enthusiastic. “Look, Sirius was practically omnipotent. Suppose we build a new one and transport ourselves back to the Earth; OK, then we’ll be sixty, seventy, eighty years old. But here’s the thing: Sirius can de-age us. It can return us to our current age, or younger. We can be twenty again, even, if we want to be.”

“I don’t want to be twenty again!” Jer exclaimed. “What about all my friends? What about my parents? I was seeing a girl from ZBGR, did you know that?”

“ZBGR?”

“It’s a biotech company. Never mind. The point is, Auron, I can’t spend forty years wherever this place is!”

“We don’t have any choice.”

“What about time travel? If we spend forty years building this thing, can we go back in time and just resume our lives from before we got blasted through the portal?”

Auron paused. Then he said, “Technically, you voluntarily jumped through the portal, against my advice.”

“Never mind that! Answer the question.”

“I don’t think so. Sirius was powerful but it was still operating within the laws of physics. New laws of physics, sure, but still laws. Time travel is probably impossible for fundamental reasons.”

Jer swore and ran his hand over his face.

They watched the flames flickering and crackling.

“Tomorrow,” said Auron, “we find a source of water. Then we find some way of trapping animals for food. Or maybe we can find edible roots or something.”

“Edible roots,” echoed Jer dejectedly.

They stared into the fire, watching the sparks rising into the alien air.

The following morning Auron awoke shivering, and shoved Jer until he too woke up.

“What?” said Jer, then he added, “Oh no.”

“What?” said Auron.

“I forgot we were here. I was dreaming I was on a date with Kate.”

“Kate?”

“The girl from ZBGR. Doesn’t matter.”

“We need to find water. I’m parched.”

“No coffee.” said Jer glumly. “No toast. Not even orange juice.”

“Yes, well we need to get moving as swiftly as possible, or we’ll be dead in a few days.”

“What’s even the point, if we’re stuck here? I can’t spend my life here, Auron.”

“Pull yourself together. We need to build another Sirius. That’s what’s standing between us and getting back to the Earth.”

Jer rubbed his head.

“OK,” he said. “All right.”

The sparse woodland where they’d spent the night lay on the edge of a wide grassy plain, beyond which was more woodland. Auron suggested they try to find a way to head downhill in the hope there was a river somewhere.

As they walked, he said, “You know what’s strange?”

“It’s all strange, Auron,” said Jer. “It’s excessively strange, mate.”

“I don’t recognise any of these plants.”

“So? You’re not a botanist.”

“I think when I told Sirius to populate the planet with plants and animals, it sort of creatively invented new plants and animals based on what it found on the Earth.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s very bad. We’re not going to know what we can eat.”

“If it’s got legs, you can eat it.”

“We can’t only live off animals. We’re going to have to carefully sample the plants in increasing quantities till we determine what’s safe to eat.”

“You’re joking, right? What if we get liver damage or cancer or something?”

“We’re just going to have to build a new Sirius before that happens. Once we’ve done it, it can repair us.”

“Whoopee.” said Jer dryly. “I can’t wait to be repaired.”

The ground rose slowly upward towards a ridge as they walked.

“Once we’ve sorted out food and water, we’ll need to follow a river down to the sea,” said Auron. “I need to make a battery. I’ll need copper, ideally. Without copper the whole thing’s going to be nearly impossible. There’s probably some, somewhere. I don’t need industrial quantities of it. We’ve got a bit but it isn’t one-hundredth of what we’ll need. If I could make acids I could even use gold; gold-iron would give us a couple of volts but I’d need glassware. We’ll need to make charcoal too; that’s a good starting point. And skin for making bellows.”

“I don’t even know what you’re going on about.”

“Basically, look out for green rocks. Maybe just streaks of green in other rocks. If we find that, everything else will be easier. We’ll get back to the Earth, but we need copper.”

“I just want breakfast right now.”

They rose to the top of the ridge and below them lay an astonishing sight.

A vast grassy plain stretched all the way to a thin sliver of sea in the distance; the plain was dotted with enormous mushrooms the size of trees, and horned cattle with long brown hair grazed between them.

“My God,” said Auron hoarsely.

“Do you think we can eat them?” said Jer.

“Very risky to eat mushrooms you don’t know.”

“I meant the horned things.”

“They look like Highland cattle. We’d need spears to catch them.”

“How do we make spears?”

“Let’s think about that later. There’s sea over there, or a lake. Our best bet right now is shellfish.”

“It’s miles away.”

“Twenty, maybe. Thirty at the most. We could probably be there by sunset. If there’s animals here then there must be a source of fresh water somewhere too.”

They began to make their way down the rocky slope towards the mushrooms. With the sun rising into the sky, the air was warm, and the only sounds were the wind, occasional curious birds, and periodic unearthly bellows from the cattle.

The cattle watched them curiously, and for the most part peacefully, until a larger bull ran at them in a feint, only swerving at the last moment.

“We need weapons!” said Jer, clutching his heart theatrically.

“You may have a point,” said Auron. “Maybe one of those.”

He pointed at a thicket of bamboo-like plants with tall-straight wooden stems.

With some effort they managed to snap two off, the stems breaking into satisfyingly-pointed shards at the end.

Jer picked up a flat rock from in-between the plants and gave a yell.

“What?” said Auron.

“Look at this.”

Jer handed him the rock.

“I don’t know,” said Auron, handing it back.

“Auron, it’s writing. This rock’s got writing on it. There are people here.”

“Looks natural to me.”

“You’ve got to be joking! This is clearly writing.”

“It’s not clearly anything. There are no people here, anyway. There can’t be. Sirius created everything on the planet from scratch. The place was uninhabited.”

“If it’s created animals and plants, why not people?”

Auron shuddered.

“I dread to think what kind of people those might be. But it’s not possible. I specifically told it to create animals and plants, and no people.”

“Maybe there were people here before you terraformed it and you just didn’t realise.”

“Look, I don’t know,” said Auron irritably. “I don’t think it’s writing.”

Jer gazed at the rock turning it about in his hands.

“If it is writing …”

“It’s not writing. It can’t be. It just can’t be.”

He grabbed the rock from Jer and stared at it again, a worried expression on his face.

“You’re not sure,” Jer observed.

“Let’s stick to the task at hand,” said Auron, handing the stone back to him again. “These sticks are going to be basically useless if one those cow things attacks us.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Jer, putting the stone in his pocket. “I’ll jab it in the eye.”

“They’re massive. They’ll crumple us like we’re made of chocolate.”

They resumed walking towards the sea.

Mixed with the unearthly bellowing of the cattle were occasional curious clicking sounds. Every giant mushroom they passed emitted an intense mushroomy odour, which Jer tried to argue must mean the mushrooms were edible, but Auron regaled him with stories of people who’d lost the use of their kidneys, or worse, by making that very assumption.

After a while they came to a swift-running stream, and they drank the cold, clear water gratefully. They could see fish swimming about in the water; some of them large enough to be worth eating, but they weren’t able to catch any.

“I’m starving,” Jer complained.

“We’ll work on them later,” said Auron. “Probably we’ll need nets, or hooks. Right now let’s focus on the beach. There’ll be food at the beach. Shellfish, for sure.”

The enormous mushrooms released clouds of dark spores whenever the wind blew, gradually covering their heads in a brown film. Jer insisted on returning to the idea of cooking and eating the abundant mushroom flesh, but Auron averred that the idea was too dangerous to try.

The sun was well on its way to setting when they finally got close enough to the large body of water they’d seen in the distance to verify that it was indeed a sea, or else a lake so large that the other side of it couldn’t be seen. The soil became sandy and the mushrooms began to thin out.

They were tired, and Jer was fantasising about enormous meals of roasted shellfish, when they rounded a large fragrant bush with leaves resembling an olive tree and saw, standing in front of them, an enormous creature.

The beast was half as tall as they themselves and resembled nothing so much as an enormous furry crab. It stood still, apparently watching them, and they froze in shock. As they stood there, it suddenly emitted a strange clattering sound, like drumsticks being clicked together, and simultaneously it seemed to swell slightly and then settle down again.

“Back away.” said Auron quietly. “Walk backwards. Slowly.”

They walked slowly backwards.

Again the creature puffed itself up, making a sickening clattering noise.

They were about to turn and run when the creature itself broke into a run, running directly forwards in a distinctly un-crablike fashion. Jer emitted a terrified shout.

It swung at them with an enormous pair of pincers and they scrambled backwards.

The thing was too quick for them. It seized Jer’s lower arm before he had time to jump out of the way. He screamed in agony as the pincers tightened on him.

“It’s breaking my arm! Make it stop!”

Auron stabbed his spear at the thing, mostly missing it. There was a horrible cracking sound and Jer emitted an inhuman agonised scream.

In desperation, Auron flung himself at the creature and drove the spear into it with all his strength.

The creature made a hideous gurgling noise and sank to the ground. Auron pushed the spear deeper into its flesh, waggling it around, until finally, the monster remained still, only its hind limbs twitching slightly.

“My arm’s broken!” shouted Jer, unable to get the pincer off himself.

Auron prised it open with some difficulty, and Jer fell onto the sandy ground.

“Let me see,” said Auron.

“It hurts!” moaned Jer.

They managed to get Jer’s jacket off and Auron inspected Jer’s arm.

“It’ll heal.” he said.

“My whole arm hurts like hell! What am I going to do?”

“It won’t stop you walking. Six weeks and it’ll be fine, probably. You’ll be fine. Maybe. I think, almost certainly.”

Jer swore. There were tears in his eyes.

“Listen, I’ve got some good news.” said Auron.

“What news could you possibly have that could conceivably be good? I’m in a lot of pain here.”

“It looks like we’ve found some food.”

Jer followed Auron’s gaze.

“That thing?” he said.

“There’s trees down there,” said Auron, pointing a little further along the coast. “We’ll build a massive fire and roast it whole. I think I can drag it as far as the trees.”

Jer’s expression gradually brightened, in spite of his pain, and he began to laugh, with tears in his eyes.

By the time darkness fell, they were jabbing at the cooked flesh of the beast and gnawing on large chunks of it.

“It’s actually pretty good,” said Jer.

“Tomorrow I’ll build a shelter,” said Auron. “We can try to smoke some of this stuff. There’s probably plants along the shoreline we can eat too. I don’t think we’re going to starve here. Sirius created a primeval world full of all kinds of life.”

“I just hope these things are scared of fire,” said Jer, waving a chunk of the creature’s flesh on the tip of his spear.

“We’ve got so much to do. We need to make charcoal. Maybe we can find clay. We need to look for iron deposits. Copper’s going to be the most difficult thing. If we can find iron and copper, I can make a battery, and everything else is just a matter of time.”

“We’ve already got some copper.”

“Not nearly enough, like I said. We’ll find more, and I’ll build a new Sirius. I’ll do it. Even if it does take decades.”

“Maybe it won’t?” Jer suggested hopefully.

“Maybe it won’t,” said Auron.

“How common is copper?” Jer asked, tearing off a chunk of flesh with his teeth, holding the spear in his one remaining good arm.

“There are major deposits on most continents.”

Jer stopped chewing.

“Most continents? What’s that suppose to mean? You mean there might not even be any on this entire continent?”

Auron shook his head.

“I think it’s unlikely. I don’t need a major deposit. I just need a bit.”

“We should check the stones along the beach.”

“We won’t find it here. It’s too soft. The sea would destroy it. We’ll have to look inland.”

“Over there, then.” said Jer, nodding towards the mountains in the distance.

“Exactly.”

For two months they remained close to the beach, attempting to create some sort of a stable lifestyle.

Auron built a shelter and steadily improved it. He fashioned primitive clay pots, made charcoal, dried salt from the seawater, and attempted unsuccessfully to melt sand into glass.

They ate shellfish and a plant from the shore that appeared almost identical to samphire, and managed to catch some fish. Jer helped with whatever he could. They tried to hunt the strange horned cattle with their curiously flat faces and unearthly bellows, and failed, concluding they would need to build an enormous pit lined with spikes, or construct bows and arrows.

Only on one further occasion did one of the crab-like creatures approach them, and they managed to scare it off by shouting at it. Often, in the distance, they would spot even larger crabs attacking the cattle, usually in groups.

Jer’s arm healed imperfectly, to the point where he could use it, but suffered ongoing pain.

They couldn’t bear to leave their new home, and instead decided to build a series of camps along the route to the mountains, where Auron hoped to find copper.

To this end, they gradually began to spend longer and longer periods away from the beach.

After another month, they were already exploring the foothills of the mountains, and for another six months after that, they searched everywhere for traces of copper.

“There’s no copper here.” said Jer one day, lying down on a patch of dusty earth on the hillside. “We’re never getting off this planet.”

“We’ve imperfectly searched the lower slopes of approximately two mountains.” said Auron, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I told you this was going to be a long job. It could take decades, but in the end we’ll get back to the Earth and we’ll be young again, just the same as we are now.”

Jer abruptly began to cry.

“What?” said Auron softly, slightly embarrassed.

“Everyone I knew is going to be old or dead.” he sobbed.

“If they’re still alive we can de-age them too.”

“And what if it takes more than decades?” said Jer, suddenly angry. “What if it takes longer than a human lifespan, Mr. Genius?”

Auron stared down at the ground.

“Look,” he said slowly, “the way I see it, life’s a disaster. Not just our lives. Everyone’s life, at some level, is a disaster. You have to do the best you can, and take the blows on the chin.”

“What a complete load of ruddy nonsense.” said Jer vehemently.

“Hold it together, Jer. I need you to hold it together. For however long it takes.”

“I can’t believe I’ve got into this stupid situation. Stuck on some messed-up planet with you and a bunch of giant crabs.”

“I think we should take a break from the copper thing. It’s great what we’ve done so far. We’ve built five new camps. We need to figure out how to take down one of those cow things. My clothes are coming apart. I think we can chip some of the stones on the beach to a sharp edge so we can cut animal skin. And maybe we should have another go at reducing iron.”

“What if there’s a winter coming, Auron? If it turns cold we’re screwed. We won’t survive.”

“There’s going to be time to prepare.” said Auron calmly. “Anyway, there’s not going to be any winter.”

“How can you know? How can you possibly know that?”

“It gets dark quickly. Dusk barely lasts half an hour. That means we’re not too far from the equator. That means winter’s not going to be severe.”

Jer wiped the tears from his face, jumped up and said, irritably, “Let’s go and get some water. I’m thirsty.”

They began to make their way down the hill, towards the only spring they had been able to find close to the mountains.

Jer was trailing behind, looking towards the mushroom plains when it happened. Auron gave a shout and disappeared. Jer hurried towards the spot where Auron had been walking only seconds earlier. Auron, he discovered, was lying at the foot of a steep scree of loose stones.

Jer shouted down to him but Auron made no reply. Jer began to desperately look for a way down.

It took him nearly twenty minutes to reach Auron. By then he had firmly resolved to end his own life by one means or another if Auron was dead. Auron’s death would mean spending the rest of his life alone on an alien planet.

He scrambled around a boulder and finally he was able to reach Auron.

“Oh thank God!” Jer exclaimed. “I thought you were done for. Are you injured?”

“I’ve twisted my ankle,” said Auron, “but it doesn’t matter. Look what I found.”

He held up a chunk of greyish rock.

“You’ve found a rock,” said Jer. “Congratulations. Auron, did you hit your head when you fell?”

“Look closer. It’s got a green streak in it. Malachite. I’ve found copper, Jer. We’re getting off this planet. I don’t know how long it’ll take us but we’re going home.”

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 5^th, 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 90^th 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 20^th 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 6^th, aiming to reach Lupeni at the other end of the trail no later than March 12^th.

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 bastard 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 15^th 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 bastard.” 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 20^th 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 bastard.”

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 bastard’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 bastards.” 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.