Pixel Juice

SPECIMENS

It was a small cage, roughly four inches square and two inches high. Somebody had placed it on the roadway. To call it a cage is perhaps an exaggeration, constructed as it was from a fine wire mesh. It had no door.

Inside the cage, a worm. A worm, a common earthworm (Annelida lumbricus), perhaps two inches long, quite thick, and with a slightly bulbous midsection.

It was the early morning, just after seven o'clock. A small group of people stared at the cage, curious, but no more than that. Nobody had seen it being placed there. A tram was forced to stop because of the gathering. The driver descended from his cab, to remonstrate with the people blocking his way. They pointed out the cage to him. The driver then tried to move it by hand. To his surprise, he found that the cage was firmly fixed to the tarmac, with some kind of bonding agent. Angry now, and fearing for his schedules, the driver warned the people aside, climbed back into his cab. He started the tram, and drove forward, slowly.

The cage was lying directly on the left-side track.

The tram hit it squarely, there was a crunching sound; the tram moved on. The driver did not stop to inspect the damage.

The cage was crushed, bent to one side, and the mesh was torn. The worm had been pushed through the gap, and lay wriggling in two pieces on the tarmac. The crowd drifted away, as though nothing had happened. Quite soon, somebody stood on one separated half of the worm, squashing it. In all likelihood, this person was not aware of what they had done.

Nobody knows what happened to the other half.

Two days later, and at approximately the same time, another cage was found. It was positioned in the same place - on the short section of Market Street that leads away from Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. Constructed of the same materials as the first one, only this time of slightly larger size, being six inches square, and the same in height. The mesh was of a wider gauge. It had no door.

Inside the cage, a mouse. A mouse, a common field mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), grey in colour, with clean fur and a long pink tail that swished, contentedly.

Again, a tram was stopped, and the driver tried to move the cage by hand, without success. He then decided to use his vehicle to move it. One or two of the crowd were horrified at this cruelty, and they protested vehemently with the driver. The driver would have no such discussion.

He did not stop to inspect the damage.

The incident was reported on page seven of the Manchester Evening News.

Five days later, a larger cage was found. This one was three feet square, two feet in height, with rigid steel bars down the sides and along the top. It was cemented to the tramlines. Nobody had seen it being placed there. It had no door.

Inside the cage, a dog. A dog, a mongrel dog (Canis familiaris), perhaps a mix of Collie and German Shepherd. It was a light fawn in colour, with patches of muted brown here and there. It was growling and obviously in some distress, the cage being slightly too small for it. The dog turned in a tight circle, again and again, and butted its head against the bars, trying to get its jaws around them.

A large crowd had gathered, and people were pushing to get a closer look. A woman was kneeling down beside the cage, trying to comfort the poor creature. The dog growled at her, in anger, in fear.

A tram was stalled in front of the cage. A long line of buses and other trams were piled up behind the stranded vehicle. Somebody called the police. A squad car arrived in ten minutes, and a puzzled officer radioed for help. Soon, the police had control of the square, diverting traffic, and trying to keep people back as workmen sawed through the bars.

The dog was released, and taken to the police station. The workmen then removed the cage, clearing the roadway.

The incident was reported on the local television news programme that evening, and was picked up by the national media. The story was connected to the first two episodes, with the worm and the mouse. The BBC featured it on the Nine O'Clock News, as the last item.

By now, most of the people of Manchester had heard of the strange happenings, and speculation was rife, in pubs and living rooms, in restaurants and launderettes. Some felt sure it was a political gesture, by an animal liberation organization. Others claimed it was merely a tasteless joke by a madman. Some even saw it as a brilliant piece of art, a trenchant protest at an unfeeling society.

The police, for their part, had made a forensic examination of the dog. Its fur was covered with grass seeds, bits of matted food, and the usual colony of fleas. The only item of real interest was a splash of silver paint found behind one ear. Chemical analysis of the paint revealed it to be of an unknown composition.

The police also examined footage taken from various security cameras in the Gardens. All five cameras had failed to operate during the early hours of the morning.

The next day, a small crowd gathered at the same location. The people were becoming intrigued; they wanted to see what would happen next. To witness the curiosity. Unfortunately, the road was quite clear, and after half an hour or so the crowd dispersed. The next day a smaller crowd waited there, but again, no cage. Each day the crowd got smaller, until people merely passed the spot, idly glancing to see but then continuing on their way.

Twelve days after the dog incident, when nobody cared any more, the fourth cage appeared. This one was the largest yet: twelve feet square, and ten feet high. The bars were spaced at two-inch intervals. It had no door. It must have been set into position during the deserted, early hours of the morning.

Inside the cage, a horse. A horse, a thoroughbred mare (Equus caballus), with a shiny black coat and a midnight-blue mane. It stood four square in the cage, quite still and at ease. Only the occasional harrumph! from its nostrils and the smoke of its breath disturbed the cold air.

The whole area was cordoned off, as the police decided what to do about the obstruction. A large crowd had gathered, increasing in numbers as the hours passed. A camera crew turned up to capture the event, and to add to the confusion. A team of workmen cut through the bars, releasing the horse into the trained hands of a veterinary surgeon. The poor creature was quickly examined, and then loaded into a horsebox. The workmen set about removing the cage. This operation took three hours to complete, and even then the road was ruined.

No traffic passed through Piccadilly Gardens that day.

The incident was reported on all the news programmes, and in every daily paper. A number of websites were set up on the Internet, dedicated to the cages and their various occupants. A round-the-clock police watch was started, and the camera crew and a large group of spectators camped out all night long, just to catch a glimpse of the next cage being erected. Everyone expected that somebody, some group, would surely come forward and claim responsibility. Nobody did.

So, the people waited. It seemed that all of the country was held in the same state of vibrant expectancy.

It took twenty-one days for the last, severely disappointed person to leave the site.

And fifty-seven lonely days after that disappointment…

Inside the cage, a jaguar. A jaguar (Panthera onca), native of Central America; a great snarling beast, breathing hot thoughts of its homeland. Spotted large, with deep black on orange, turning in its own tight circus, bound by the cage, but barely so.

Nobody dared come close; instead a circle of fear formed around the cage. Time and the city slowed to a halt, as though the beast controlled the clock's pace. It took two days to release the creature safely, and even stunned it provoked fear.

The incident was reported around the world, and discussed in Parliament. Crazed pamphlets were published, offering futile explanations; a desperate man came forward to be punished for the incidents. The police dismissed him after two days' questioning. Synopses for books and films were hastily prepared, many of them finding their price. A range of toy cages was put on the market, five in the series, containing exact models of the worm, the mouse, the dog, the horse and the jaguar. Each cage had a different secret mechanism that would unlock the bars and release the creature. They were the most popular gift that Christmas.

And then, nothing. No new cage appeared. Months passed by. People speculated that the process was complete. Talk drained away to memory, and then to dismissal. A few jokes remained, that was all.

Exactly one year on from the very first incident, finally, mysteriously, the next cage appeared. It was four feet square, six feet high. Bars at three-inch intervals. Fixed to the road so rigorously, it seemed to have deep foundations. In all respects similar to the previous five cages, except in this one particular: it had a door. A door that was open, slightly ajar, and a large, heavy, padlock that swung on a reinforced strut. The padlock was unclasped, and the tiny gap between the clasp and lock -it caught the eye, teasingly. There was no key in the lock. Once closed, it would remain so.

Inside the cage, nothing. Nothing, an emptiness. An aching sense of something not being there; and the people, the vast crowd of people who gazed in silence, they thought, at last, at last, something has escaped!

Until they realized.

The cage was waiting…

A man, a middle-aged man (Homo sapiens), dressed smartly as though for an insurance office, stepped forward from the crowd.

CREEPING ZERO

Tonight we caught five. We was pretty good. Mr Bone says we're nearly back on target. I'm thinking that was pretty good anyroads until Clingfilm says it don't mean fuck, we got yards to go before we gets us some bonus. We got some bad days see? We got us some bad days where we nearly didn't catch any at all. But now we're making up. Tonight we caught five.

Tonight we caught three. Pretty good. But not as pretty good as last night was pretty good.

Today we caught none. Some days you do that. You catch none. Sometimes you catch one, most times two. Sometimes three. Sometimes five. Once we caught six, and once we caught seven. That's the most we ever caught in one time, seven. That was a special day, we got prizes. We never caught four, not in one time. I thought this was just strange luck until Mr Bone tells us that you never see four together, they don't like that number. He don't know why they don't like it, and neither does Edie and not even Shiva who thinks she knows everything. But today we caught none, which is the same as saying today we caught four, because you never catch four, not in one time. But Mr Bone says it's cheating, to think like that.

Tonight we caught two. Not good, not bad, just the usual number to catch in any one night or day. I like the dark rides best. Everyone keeps telling me it's more dangerous at night because that's mainly when they come out and that's why we get more wages for the darkshift, but I don't care. I don't mind how much we get just as long as we catch as many as possible. Everyone laughs at me for this, because all they talk about is the wages and the bonus and the prizes, except for Edie who never talks much, and except for Shiva who's a little bit crazy but who cares because she catches more of them than anyone else. So that leaves just Mr Bone and Clingfilm talking about the wages. That's enough. I like it best of all around three or four in the morning when the whole city just belongs to us. So quiet the streets, so quiet and tender almost. It's not like we're driving, more like we're floating through Manchester. Tonight we caught two.

Today we caught another two. That's a lot of twos to be catching. Pretty soon we're gonna have to start catching the threes again, and the fives, and the sixes and who knows even the sevens. The best that any crew ever caught in one time was nine, but that was the Mambo Suicide Crew, they're famous for riding hard, and anyroads they clean the Gorton block. All you've gotta do in Gorton is walk out the door, you've caught five already, they're everywhere. Whereas we work the Levenshulme area, there's not nearly as many, and today we caught two.

Tonight we caught three. One time I would've called that doing pretty good. Now it's doing pretty bad. Mr Bone is cursing, and Clingfilm is saying that's it, no bonus, and Edie's getting quieter by the minute, and Shiva is going crazy in the van for some let-out. There's the five of us. We're the Creeping Zero Crew. There's always five in a crew. I think that's pretty neat, there being five of us, because that means that one can stick with the van, and the four others can go on patrol. So if you stick together out there, there's no chance of you being taken for a gang of them, is there? Because you never see them in fours. That's how Mr Bone explains it, anyroads. Mr Bone is the boss, and Clingfilm is the driver, and Edie's the tracker, and Shiva, well Shiva's just Shiva, ain't she? She's the gun. She's caught hundreds of them. Me? I'm the kid, the apprentice. This is my first ever crew. I've never caught any. I just drag them back to the van, and skin them.

Today we caught none. I don't even want to talk about it.

Today we caught one. What's to say? We just went out there, with Edie leading the way, and we found a loner, and we caught it, and we killed it, and I skinned it, and that was that. The rest of the day we just went around the streets, and I tried to do some talking to Edie, saying that I'd like to be a tracker one day, but she wouldn't talk back at me, just living in her own world, I guess. And Mr Bone says you don't get to be a tracker, kid, you have to be born a tracker, and Clingfilm said that was a pile of fuck. But what does he know? What does anybody know? Today we caught one.

Tonight we caught five. We did pretty good, and we were up for it, except we let one get away. That means we caught four. It's not the same as really catching four, because you never do, and that's that. It's just that one of them got away. That got Shiva mad, you bet. She hates it when they get away. And Clingfilm was cursing about the bonus again, when really it was all his fault that one got away. He was hiding behind the curses, even I can see that. But the strangest thing was when the one got away, and the four that were left went mad like, when they realized there was four of them, I suppose. Usually they come easy once they're caught, but these four went mad on us, and I was scared because I know that's how the Creeping Zero lost Wesley, catching five and letting one get away, and the four what's left going mad. But this time Shiva got them all. Got them good.

Today we caught none. I don't mind it. I was still shaken up from last night, and I can't stop thinking about Wesley now that I've started. I never met him, because I took his place. But all the crew, they go on about him, like he was brilliant or something, even though he got lost. I wish they wouldn't, because them going on like that means I'll have to be brilliant one day. I hope I am, one day, and that I get to be a top-notch tracker, but thinking about it just makes me shake even more. Today we caught none. Good.

Today we caught one. We did pretty good. Catching one ain't usually pretty good, but this time it was, because we had to keep it alive. Sometimes you have to do that, keep them alive. You get more money, so Clingfilm's happy. Mr Bone got word that the university wanted a live one, and so we had to be careful, because they would rather die than be kept alive. It's my first time at keeping one alive. It was a female. I wouldn't mind so much if it was a male, but it wasn't. It was a female. We had her tied up in the van, and all I could do was look at her struggling. I don't know, it's different. It's different close up. I thought it would be. I thought that close up it would be easy to tell, but it wasn't. Because she looked just like the rest of us. But, you know, beautiful. And that's why it was different. And Mr Bone says you have to be careful, thinking like that because them looking just like us is only the disguise. That's why Edie is so important, Mr Bone says, because without a tracker how would we ever know which to catch? And today we caught a live one.

Tonight we caught six. And everybody's going crazy good. But what is it, what's wrong? I can't stop thinking about yesterday and the one we kept alive, the female. Because why are we catching them? Nobody knows. I asked Mr Bone, he's the boss and he doesn't know. I asked Clingfilm and he said it's for the money, and I asked Shiva and she said it's just so we can kill them. And I asked Edie, and Edie didn't answer. And then Mr Bone says we shouldn't never ask that question, it's a stupid question, you might as well ask the moon why it keeps coming back every night. We just catch them, that's all. And tonight we caught six. And then I got to thinking about Wesley again, and why he went and got himself lost.

Tonight we caught two. Pretty good. Pretty bad. I don't know. Thinking about the girl, the female, I mean. And thinking about Wesley and the job and everything. There's only two ways to leave the job, so Shiva reckons. You can die, or you get lost. And you bet she said that dying is the best way, the only way, because getting lost is when you just walk out one night, away from the van, away from the crew, and you become one of them, one of the lost ones out there, wandering, wandering. Wandering until you get caught. But when I reminded her about Wesley, she just turned away and started messing with the gun. So I waited for the quiet time and I asked Mr Bone and he says you shouldn't be thinking about that. But Wesley got lost, I says. Yeah, Wesley got lost, and Mr Bone gets this look in him then. But he'll come back to us, he says. And I ask what that means. And he says, just like Edie came back to us.

Today we caught one, or was it two? I can't remember.

Tonight we caught some. I think we did. It's just that I can't stop looking at Edie now, knowing that she got lost, and then she came back, and now she's a tracker and can find the lost real easy. Maybe you have to get lost, to find the lost, to become a tracker. Maybe that's what Mr Bone meant when he said that you have to be born a tracker, because you certainly have to be born to get lost. And I'm scared, scared that I was born like that, with the losing inside me, and that one day I'll just walk clean away.

Tonight we caught something. What was it? The whole crew is damaged by the catching. Because ain't that the nightmare: to catch the ones who got lost and to have them turn around and not want to come back. Not like Edie, not like Edie came back with the tracking knowledge, but to just go crazy bad on us. It must be Wesley. It must be poor lost Wesley we caught, but Mr Bone won't mention it, and Edie's on the edge of something, and Shiva just sits there cleaning the gun like for ever, and Clingfilm won't even talk about the money any more, that bad. But we had a job to do. And we did it. We went out there and we caught it and we killed it and I dragged it back and I skinned it. We had a job to do.

Tonight we caught two and a half. We did pretty good and everybody's jumping because no-one's ever caught a half a one before. It's not really a half a one, that's just what we call them when they're in the changing state. Anyroads, it's very rare, so we're on for the bonus, most definitely. And everyone's saying I did brilliant, even Clingfilm, because I helped catch the half a one. It's the first one I ever caught, and it turned out real special. And then we just went floating through the night, and we was singing.

CRAWL TOWN

Old Tom Sharpsaw had this story that nobody ever left Crawl, that's why the cemetery was so crowded. That's why all the tombstones scratched up tight against each other. That's why the ground was so parched. That's why the housing estate was so rancid. That's why the food was so bad. That's why the buses always stopped at the edge of town. That's why we didn't have a football team. That's why the windows were always broken. That's why the roads curved around and kept meeting themselves halfway. That's why the sun worked like a fridge light, and the rain like a toilet flush. That's why all us girls wore sackcloth tracksuits. That's why the local library placed all the street-maps on the sex-education shelves. That's why the Town-Hall clock has only got one hand, and seven numbers. And it moves backwards. That's why, he'd say. That's why, that's why.

Old Tom lived on top of the Vanishing Palace. This was the name of the amusement arcade, right next to the cemetery. To get there you had to step over the fallen stones, what was called the crazy paving of the dead. Us kids used to hang around the Vanishing Palace a whole lot, because what else was there, except for the Factory and that was too well protected. There were six machines to play. Five, really, because one of them was adults only. This was the famous Intravenus machine.

That's about as much excitement as you could find in Crawl, just thinking about what the beautiful Intravenus girl got up to. We just assumed the machine was female, it felt right somehow.

Crawl. Sounds like a strange name for a place, but believe me, you ever take several bad luck wrong turnings and end up here one day, you'll know where the name comes from. It's somewhere to the north of Manchester, so they tell us at school anyway. I won't say where exactly, just in case you're tempted. Anyway, I was born here, that's my excuse. I say born; nobody is strictly born in Crawl - you just wake up one day and find yourself here, alone in a stranger's bed, with nowhere else to go, and then you realize, oh shit, I've been here all my life already, what now? But like Tom said, escape isn't in the dictionary. Believe me, I've looked.

The machines in the Vanishing Palace only worked with old money. So when you went up to the change booth, and handed in your allowance, Tom would hand you back a little pile of antique coins. Most of them had a king's head on them, Charles III or somebody. And near all of them had teeth marks in the soft metal. Some of them had been bitten so hard, they didn't even work the machines. And anyway, the Intravenus machine would only work with one special coin that we never got to see. Tom kept it in a box behind the counter. And he'd sit there reading his paper while us youngsters played the kiddie games. Every so often he would mutter something about the state of the world, I mean the state of the town, of course.

The Crawl Gazette was four pages thin. It came out once a month. It was always four pages, even when there wasn't enough news or adverts to fill it; those times they just left some blank spaces in there. Sometimes they'd leave whole pages blank. One famous time the whole paper was blank, except for the title. When there was news, it was usually about the overcrowding of the cemetery, or the campaign to get rid of the Intravenus machine. Sometimes it reported on the latest product of the Factory. That was all I ever read it for, to see what the Factory had given this month. It always gave one thing a month.

Tom Sharpsaw had a robot that helped him run the Vanishing Palace. It was a crude spider of a thing, with two-and-a-half of its legs missing, and a single bulbous eye that was often clouded with a strange liquor. Out of its round body, a long needle sometimes protruded. This it would plug into the electric socket. The robot's name was Oris. Tom said that the name stood for Automated Retrieval of Information System, even though automated didn't begin with an O, it just sounded like it did. He'd stolen Oris from the library, so the machine wasn't up to much except maybe checking how many games had been played on which machine by whom. That kind of stuff. So Tom claimed anyway, but we reckoned it knew a whole lot more than that, including maybe the secret code to the Intravenus machine.

Tom had a thing about stealing things. He didn't see it as a crime, because everybody knew he'd done it. And mostly the stuff he stole was useless anyway, nobody wanted it back. Like I mentioned, the second hand of the clock was missing, and some of the numbers. Well who needed a clock in Crawl? What was there to get to on rime? So Tom had done his civic duty; the tall, spindly finger was planted in his garden round back of the Palace, with creepers growing all up it. The numbers, some he'd turned into furniture; the number two, for instance, he'd put legs on it to use as a dining table. But most of the things he stole went into the making of the game machines; the number four of the clock, that was the base of the Butterfly Circle machine. The machines were never finished, always something more would be added to them.

You can guess why Tom was just about the only grown-up I talked to much. He had some crazy stories, and the brilliant games, and all that. And sometimes he would take me on his stealing trips, and teach me some of the arcane secrets of breaking and entering. Other times I would help out adding new bits to the machines, that was the most fun. But mostly I liked him just because he was the only one who ever talked about getting away from the town's clutches.

It was all just talk, but what the hell.

Oris had come out of the Factory. Whenever anything comes out of the Factory, first of all we have to decide what it is, what it does. This is the Town Hall's job. Sometimes they can't ever find a reason for it. But with Oris, it was fairly obvious what was going on, what with those legs, and the eye, and the computing engine. That's why the library got to use it. Until Tom stole it off them, of course. I helped him do that. By then the robot was on its last five-and-a-half legs anyway. Nobody missed it.

If you've ever seen the Crawl library, you'll know why they really didn't need an Automated Retrieval of Information System. There just wasn't enough information to retrieve, that was it. The place was a shack, really. Small and grotty, made out of planks, and mostly falling down. And so small, they couldn't have more than a hundred books in there, surely. Tom claimed that one book was enough to last a lifetime anyway, especially if you read it in the special way.

'What do you mean?' I'd ask him. 'What special way?'

'One word a day,' he'd answer.

'One word a day, lasts a lifetime? I don't believe you.'

'Check it out, girl. Put up some money.'

Now Tom Sharpsaw had a whole bunch of books on the shelves at the Vanishing Palace. More than the library had, that was for sure. The thing about the books that Tom kept: they were all written by himself. So we made this bet. I said that reading a book one word a day wouldn't take a lifetime, and he claimed it would. And so certain was he of winning, he let me choose whichever book to test the theory on. So I looked over them all: unfinished novels, engineering manuals, dictionaries of illusions, a censored atlas of the world, collections of poetry. Of course I chose the atlas, after all wasn't it all maps?

'There's lots of words in there,' said Tom.

'Like where?'

'Place names. Here, in the back. Thousands of them.'

'OK. I'll choose a poetry book.'

The book I picked out was a tattered paperback affair, a slim self-published volume called The Silvering. The author's name was Zenith O'Clock, which was one of the names Tom sometimes used for his writing. I flicked through the book; there were only thirty pages, twenty-six of which contained poems. Actually, now I looked at it, it wasn't so much a bunch of poems, more a very short story, set out with only a few words on each page, and lots of empty space.

'Do we read all the book?' I asked. 'The bits at the front, the contents and all that? Or do we just read the poems themselves?'

'Just the poems,' Tom answered.

'What's wrong? Don't you want to win, or something?'

'Just read the words, one at a time.'

'OK, I'll read. You see how many days it takes me.'

'Begin.'

'OK… here goes.'

And then I read out the word 'Possibly…'

You can see the problem, can't you? I'm telling you this story about the poetry book, just so you'll get an inkling of how Tom Sharpsaw's brain worked. Because I couldn't read out the next word, which was 'you', until the next day. And then each day after that I had to go round to the Vanishing Palace, just to read the next word. I got as far as reading out loud the passage, 'Possibly, you could say that one evening, late in the future, all the mirrors in the world…', which took all of seventeen days, and then I just couldn't be bothered any more.

To this day I'm still not sure if I lost that bet, or if I won it. Certainly, no money changed hands.

So then, Tom Sharpsaw had a brain a bit like the roads around here; he kind of met you halfway through a thought, but from another direction, if you see what I mean. The best way to describe it is to tell about the machines he made. He built these strange contraptions out of anything he could get his hands on really, including some products from the Factory. Stuff that other people saw absolutely no use for, he would combine into these bewildering games. I call them games; there wasn't any obvious way of playing them. You just had to find your way around them, work out what they were for, try to unravel their mystery as you went along. I think the object of the game was to find out how to play it.

And I guess the Factory works in just the same way. Sometimes we would go and stand alongside the outer fence, just to watch if anything was being produced. It never was, of course. Nobody ever saw the Factory actually deliver anything; the products would just turn up, left on the special platform that was the only part of the whole compound we could ever touch. Every other part of the fence was electrified. Robot guards circled the spaces between the fences.

The Factory protected itself.

There it stood in the distance, nested within the three fences and the moat; the centre of attraction around which the town of Grawl slowly travelled. A giant of a place it was, made out of crumbling red brick, on which the words hercules mill 1897 stood out in dirty white lettering. They told us in school that people had worked inside it once, a long, long time ago, before all the processes were automated. At the end, so they say, only one person was needed to operate the whole building. I was very excited when I learned that this last supervisor was a woman, I suppose because it's the kind of thing I could imagine myself doing, wandering alone around a cavernous factory, totally in charge of an army of robots. It was the kind of fantasy I had, when I was a young girl, and I would always see myself as wearing a long, flowing ballgown in these dreams, I don't know why. I would be dancing with a very handsome male robot.

Nobody knows what happened to that last supervisor. She must have died, years ago, centuries ago.

And now, at night, the Factory's lights come on, one by one, and the whole town listens to the constant purring of the secret engines. Tom reckons it just got caught in its own flow diagram one day, and had no more need of the human hand. But still, it produces, following the twisted instructions…

The best thing that ever happened was when I actually got to see the Factory make a delivery. No, that's not true. What it was, I was once the person who found a product on the delivery platform. I didn't see it being put there, nobody sees that, I just came down to the Factory early one morning and there it was, this… thing. It was a flat circular object, about thirty centimetres in diameter and made out of plastic. And this plastic was etched with a spiral groove on both sides of the disc. A paper label had been glued to the central area, and this was covered With writing. Reading this, I found out that the object was called Pixelkids Come Out Tonight, and had been made by somebody called Janus Fontaine. I didn't know what it was, but instead of taking it over to the Town Hall to be registered, I showed it to Tom at the Vanishing Palace. But he was just as puzzled as I was, and said that he would have to study it.

I kind of forgot all about the product for a while, because I never heard anything more about it from Tom. But then, about six months later, there it was, the thing I'd found, now a part of the Shark Magnet machine. Tom had set it up so the disc spun around, and the groove in it came into contact with a tiny shard of diamond he had prised out of a stolen necklace. And it made a noise! The spinning disc made a noise, a type of music I think, but nothing like I'd ever heard before.

So there you are; the Factory making these strange products that can hardly be used, until you break the code on them. And Old Tom Sharpsaw spending his lost days constructing perverse, uncontrollable machines. They were the mirror of each other.

Take the Snake Loop game he invented, for instance; all these metal pipes that twisted together, sometimes sending up clouds of green smoke. Here, the first thing was figuring out how to turn the machine on, because there was a different way of turning it on every time you put your money in the slot. And then, one day just when you think you've got the hang of turning it on, and you've successfully shot down all the fluffy green clouds with the attached perfume gun, what should you discover but that turning it on wasn't turning it on at all. Turning it on was just turning on the unlocking device which the clouds made. And killing the clouds in a certain order, that was the real way of turning on the Snake Loop machine. Only then could you really start playing the game, which had absolutely nothing at all to do with killing clouds, and a whole lot more to do with snakes and loops and the rhythm of the heart and the shadow of the eye…

Well, it's the Factory, isn't it? Tom's caught in the loop as well; we all are. And that's why nobody ever gets to leave Crawl, and why the goddamn graveyard is so crowded. And maybe one day we'll find out what the Factory is really making. The Big Product, Tom calls it. Because all these things it makes a gift of, they're just the side products, that's what the experts reckon anyway; things that have gone wrong, say, or failed experiments. Tom reckons it another way; he reckons the Factory is giving us these products just so we can help complete the process. And if we ever find out what the final product is, maybe then we all get to leave…

It scares me just thinking about it.

So there were five of these machines that Tom had made: the Snake Loop, the Butterfly Circle, the Plague Circus, the Shark Magnet and the Liquid Tiger machine. And like I said, all of them just kept on growing as the years passed by, and most of them included little things here and there that had come out of the Factory. But the Intravenus machine, that was different. Intravenus was a Factory product in itself. The whole thing had come out just as it was, complete in all its parts, ready for use. The only trouble being, nobody could work out the reason for it.

The shape of the thing didn't help any, being a perfect sphere made from a burnished metal of some kind. A hand knocked against it revealed a hollowness within, alive with echoes, and yet there appeared to be no way to open it up. Two small circular holes placed at right angles to each other allowed a glimpse of the contained darkness, which was smoky and smelled of ash. Certainly, at six feet in diameter, it was one of the largest products yet delivered, but that didn't mean anything; very often the smaller objects proved the most useful, like the bird shoes for instance, they were much sought after. But the Intravenus, what use was it? A large, hollow globe with two holes in it, that's it. So the thing was rolled on over to the Town Hall, which is where all products of the Factory were meant to be registered.

It wasn't called the Intravenus machine in those days, of course, it wasn't called anything. So that's when Tom Sharpsaw came calling. He paid a night-time visit to the Council Yard where all the useless objects were stored. And he found a home for the strange new machine in the Vanishing Palace. Of course he didn't know what the purpose of it was either, not at first anyway, not until he started to work on it, and I'm sure this is where Oris the Robot comes in handy. It was Oris that most probably discovered the secret code of the latest machine, because all the Factory's products are linked in some weird way.

We just don't know the weirdness of the way, that's all.

All Tom Sharpsaw had to do then was turn the secret code into a process that could be coin-operated, by the special coin naturally, and there it was, the star turn of the Vanishing Palace. He painted the sphere black, with the word Intravenus in swirling red letters. He only called it the Intravenus after he'd found out what the purpose of it was, so all us kids were real keen to have a go on it. And I was a bit mad at him anyway, because he hadn't let me help him work on the machine, that wasn't fair. The least I was expecting was first go on the new game. Except then he goes and paints adults only on it as well. It was the first time we'd ever seen such a phrase in Crawl. Tom was very strict about it being for adults only, and so it was only a few men of the town who got to play the Intravenus. And not only men, because some women started to play it as well. They would stare through one of the holes, while a beam of light that Tom had rigged up was shone through the second hole. What they saw inside, we just couldn't imagine. The arrival of the game didn't please everybody, however, because pretty soon some of the older and more conservative people of Crawl started a campaign to have the Intravenus machine closed down, even destroyed. This made us even more curious. We'd ask the players as they came out of the Palace what it was they'd seen in the game, what had happened, what was it like, what was the secret? Please, we'd demand, please tell us what the mystery is.

But nobody would. They'd just walk out of the Vanishing Palace with this glazed expression on their faces, as though they were drunk or something. Near everybody who'd played the game would start to gather around the Factory's outer fence, just staring at the place. Like it was a temple or something. We got so curious that some of us decided to hide in the back room of the Palace while Tom locked up for the night.

There was me, and Bobby, and Janet, and Flo.

Bobby dropped out because he was too scared, I think, so that left the three of us, three girls. I guess that's why we were so fascinated with the machine, not so much that it was adults only, but more because of the name; we all wanted to be in love one day. Because what else could you hope for in a town called Crawl? So there we were, all three of us cramped in the little store room, surrounded by all the bits of things that Tom Sharpsaw hadn't got round to using yet. And it was dark, and scary, and worse still I couldn't help feeling guilty at doing the dirty on Tom, after all he'd taught me. I was going to use the skills he'd passed on to me against him. So how could I not be feeling bad?

But the Intravenus Girl was calling, and that's all that mattered.

Tom lived in some little rooms above the Palace. We had to wait a few hours until all was silent from up there, and every flicker of light had been extinguished. Even then we still waited a while longer, just to make sure. Then we crept out.

It was easy enough to find the box he kept the special coin in. And easier enough with my stealing skills to pick the lock on it. There was the coin! How it gleamed, not like the usual coins at all. This one was shiny, with no marks of hunger. Freshly minted, but how could it be, with a queen's head upon it. Elizabeth II. How long ago was that? Nobody knew.

There was a plan to all this. Flo would keep watch, and Janet would help me with the machine, but I would be the first to look into the hole, that was decided because wasn't I the one who had stolen the key? Tom had suspended the sphere from wires, to bring the apertures up to eye level. Of course that was too high for us kids, so I had to stand on a stool to get to the right level. Janet held the stool while I climbed up, and then I told her to put the coin in the slot. Which she did, making the beam fire into the one hole while I put my eye, tenderly, nervously, against the other.

And I looked inside of Venus.

At first, all was a fog, a swirling of darkness that the light beam cut into fragments. And then the beam would bounce off the inside of the globe, and cross over itself, and where it crossed, a side beam would shoot out. In a few seconds the whole of the inside of the sphere was rilled with these crisscrossing beams of light. So many of them now, they made a spectrum embrace; a meeting at the centre, where the lights fused into colour.

And inside the colours, an image started to form, giving shape to a woman's face. A woman's face I had seen before, in one of the picture books at school. The last supervisor! She was trying to speak to me…

Just then I heard Flo shouting from the doorway, and I thought Tom must've woken up or something, heard a noise perhaps, the woman's voice, or else he'd noticed the beam of light. And the next thing was Janet screaming, and pulling me off the stool.

I was on the floor, with Janet beside me, and Flo running over towards us. And there, rising up on what was left of his spindly legs, Oris the Robot was jabbing at my body with the electric needle and then I was screaming as well, especially when I saw Tom Sharpsaw standing over me, shaking his head in a fearsome rage…

All this has come back to me, because Tom Sharpsaw died recently. He never did make it out of the town, and now his body is just one more occupant of the graveyard. We drifted apart after the incident I've just described, and pretty soon after that he shut the doors of the Vanishing Palace once and for all. He more or less closed himself up in there, only coming out for food, or for the occasional stealing trip. Eventually even those stopped, and we never saw much of him at all. And that was an end to playing the Intravenus.

I went to the funeral, I'm not sure why. I was the only person there. He meant a lot to me, I suppose, when I was a kid, and certainly my life without him became very boring. I work for the council now, processing the Factory's products. That was never a part of my youthful fantasies, was it? But still, we do know a lot more about the place these days, and about the mysterious fourth fence, the one within our minds. I think Tom was a kind of escape, just in his company, maybe that's it. But standing there amongst the rain-spattered tombstones, I couldn't help but look over to where the Vanishing Palace shadowed the thin, dying rays of the sun. The building was in a terrible state; the windows boarded up, holes in the roof where a few birds fluttered to and fro, the whole thing dusted with cobwebs.

What can I say? It was a simple job to work the mechanisms of the lock. Some skills you never lose. Opening the door, it was like going back twenty years, but the sight that greeted me was altogether a shock. The whole amusement arcade had been taken over by the machines. I couldn't say there was a definite number of them any more, because Tom had joined them all together, over time, into one giant apparatus. It was a game beyond all rules, and I could only wonder at the controlling loneliness that had produced this monster.

I turned on the overhead lights. Luckily, the electricity was still working. I stood then, in silent amazement at the sight. The room was filled, wall to wall, with the game. Pipes and wires sprouted here and there, in seemingly random display; wheels waited to turn; fanbelts were stretched over pulleys and cogs; levers were poised; gyroscopes were balanced on the horizon's edge. And there, at the very centre, was the suspended globe of the Intravenus.

I found myself remembering Tom's words about the Big Product, and how we would all escape the town once we had helped the Factory build it.

Was this the Escaping Game?

A sudden noise startled me. Something scuttled from behind a part of the machine. It was Oris, the Robot. I saw that he had only three legs left. He stood somewhat awkwardly on this tripod, watching me, expectantly. So I walked over to the counter, found the coin box. For the second time in my life, I picked the lock on it. The special coin was there, waiting, with a note. It read, 'Here you go, girl.'

There was no clear path to the Intravenus machine, I had to clamber over various pieces of apparatus. Of course, I had no need of a stool this time, the viewing aperture was exactly level with my sight. I wasn't even sure if the game was finished yet. Knowing Tom, it never quite would be. Perhaps that was my job now?

The coin slid easily into the slot. The beam of light was fired, and all around me the vast engine of the Vanishing Palace stirred into noisy, clanking life.

I set my eye to ignition.

ORGMENTATIONS

William Meta Meta III, artificial hair on hire, last night threw a sparkle party. Strictly Robots Only trumpeted the invite, but the Zoom Lens Maganauts managed an elegant gate-crash. Everybody, but everybody was there, and much sport was had by one and all. Machines both famous and flirtatious were seen in various states of undress and dismantlement. The Clan of Squeaky Clean made a frightful mess of table nine. Lady Swankish, she of the troubled Baby Metal Company, left various parts of herself in the trifle. (Dark gossip was told of DJ Pixel Juice.) Entertainment was provided, at table, by a newcomer to the scene, one Tony Tango, a magician of sorts. (Dark gossip so fast so deep.) He turned the wine into oil, which was drunk with glee. The Glee was supplied free of charge by RoboVaz International. (Let loose! Let loose!) Mucho sucking of the Vurt feathers, including a rather delightful pink, that caused an automated orgy to break out. (Hands of the DJ move around move around.) We can only guess at the cleaning bills! But quite the best part of the evening took place when Benji Spike showed off his latest 'cyborgmentation' collection. This self-styled Avant Primitive really has got the demi-mondo in thrall. (Landscapes of scratch.) Young models of stainless-steel beauty clanked up and down the catwalk, stripping off in tempo to the new Lab Test Residue album. (Hands of the DJ sonic bloom.) Oh the sight of so much naked burnished chrome fair dazzled the eyes! One shining boy of non-specific machinery had a human index finger pierced through his lower lip. (Such noise such crackle such slither!) Another, a female of the Paradroid species, had a human eye, still gazing! set dead centre in her polished brass tongue. Eyes and ears and nipples and navels, all carefully harvested from fully paid-for volunteers, were seen in gorgeous contrast against the sheen of metal skin. (Hands of the DJ wet to the traces.) We could go on, but the most impressive aspect of the collection was the advanced use of the new anti-decay fluids. (Rapid fire fingertronics.) These human parts were still alive, so well preserved were they. Benji Spike claims they will last for up to six weeks, before the stench becomes rather too unsociable. How marvellous! (Let loose! Let loose!) But we save the • best for last. Imagine our delight to see mounted stylishly upon the platinum breasts of a young she-robot - yes! - a fully extended human penis! (Dark gossip so fast so deep.) Bravo, Monsieur Spike! (Hands of the DJ move around.) Oh, dear sweet reader, you really should have been there!

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V

HANDS OF THE DJ

Dark gossip was told of DJ Pixel Juice, so fast, so deep, were the ranges of her landscape of scratch. They said her hands moved around at sonic bloom, making ghosts of themselves in the stage lights. She had to have more than two hands fully extended, surely, to let loose such noise, such crackle, such slither. Such expert play of the new anti-decay fluids. Vinyl went wet to the traces, held sway in time to rapid-fire fingertronics; etch-plate aesthetics, fractal scratches (really should've been there) out on the limits of the human edit. Echoes of beat that last for up to six weeks, revolving through clubland. Booked top slot at the Magnetic Field weekender, Pixel Juice drew a record crush. They say half the known universe got turned away (really, really should've been there) even the ones with tickets. Goon Guards Unlimited were on bonus alert to keep it tight on the invite, members only and strictly drug-free. Walls were high and fat around the field, and electrified. Blue sparks painted the sky as some loser got stung too good with an access-no-areas powder burn.

Deep in the night, when the music pulsed already from the warm-up; out where the walls went fizz, some kid was offering a baby goon something conducive from his shoulder bag. The babe turned him down, but the kid gave her the shot for free. Five minutes later the guard was seeing stripy penguins, and the kid was making foreplay to the wall with a spurt of hi-level Vaz. Bootleg police issue. Sure was slippy!

The kid, name of Marco, he was only sixteen. Skinny but tall, dressed to the tips in black silk, a touch of lace. He had a spark about him, something in the eyes, something in the way he moved. He found a space in the crowd to call his own. He didn't dance, not to look at anyway; but his mind was skipping to some home-made spectral beat. The night was smoked; lit with purple, hard at the edges, liquid in the middle where the music came into focus and the people moved. They moved! Pixel Juice had them down in the dazzle, up for the float. Over the field, cruising the giant relay screen, the gloved-up hands of the woman; a constant blur, magnified one thousand. Left hand cut deep bass rhythms, right hand worked the scattershot punctuation. She had all the old ones, the stuff you couldn't get any more, the voodoo grooves. Waves of colour came scudding from the decks with every hard slice of the stylus. The hands that makes the scratches that make the colours that makes the trance that make the crowd go wild in a dance that makes the colours that make the hands that dance to make the scratches. And deep within this feedback loop stands Marco; he ain't dancing, he ain't swooning. He's got some whole other kind of a thing going on. This was his time, he knew it was.

The after-gig party was a burn-out zone mainly, hogged by record company dandies, orbital candies, and the press gangers and depress gangers. The marquee was flooded with cheap lager and the sponsor's Braindeath Vodka concoction. Members of the Family Goon surrounded the tent and passed a joint around. They had dogs with them; plus some tasty concealed weapons, but no trouble was to be had; the liggers were out to business lunch on Planet Whiz. None of them cared that Pixel Juice had left the party hours ago. The thing about the DJ, she was never the one for hanging out. She didn't give interviews. Never turned up to accept awards. No known vices, which pissed the marketing boys off no end. OK, no drugs for the punters, fair enough she wants that, but stop hogging the nosebag will yer? OK, she's a lesbian, what's that supposed to mean? With the same partner for years now? Tell me about it. No fucking story! Sniff, sniff.

And this partner, her name was Molly, this partner was walking Pixel hand in hand back to the trailer. It was three in the morning, still dark. The way was lit by overhead lights. An Artists and Repertoire man was lying face down in the mud. A thin rain was falling. Molly unrolled a little umbrella. Behind them, a discreet somewhat drunken distance, a junior goon was keeping watch. Suddenly, Pixel stopped in her tracks. Music could be heard. The guard tensed, reached for the weapon. The music was coming from Pixel's personal bus. This was bad, this was strange. The vehicle was supposed to be high-security. It wasn't the damage to the bus, she didn't give a toss about that; it was the vinyl: she kept her priceless vinyl in there. So the party-guard was staggering forward, pointing his radio at the vehicle and calling up assistance on his gun, and Molly was hiding behind the umbrella. But Pixel Juice, she was just standing there, she was just staring. She was just listening. That music, wafting slow, slow, fast and funky from the open door of the bus…

The number-one call for all junkies of groove. Pixelkids Come Out Tonight. The prize catch. Angel dust, shook from the wings. Talked about, never seen. Neither touched nor played, and definitely never scratched, not in all the years since Pixel Juice had been making music, and then some. This sound was launched way back, 1970s style. Before the world was born even. A good tongue licking from an ancient god couldn't even come close.

Pixel told the goon to hang back with a hand gesture, a black-gloved gesture. Her left hand. With the right, the yellow-gloved, she opened the door to the bus. It came open easy, no damage, the catch still slippy from something warm. She knew that stuff. Hi-grade Vaz; she used it on the records for extra texture. But all she could hear now was the music. She followed it inside. The bus was dark, only the glitter of a record spinning on her personal decks. Catching fire. Time was, she would have killed to get that specimen. Now she looked beyond the music, into the dark. A figure was lounged on her couch. Stretched out, eating an apple, it looked like; looking cool and absolutely couldn't care less.

'Hi there, Pixel,' the figure drawled. 'How yer doing? Nice music, uh?'

'How much do you want for it?'

'Put the wallet away, Pixel. You know it's not like that.'

'Right.'

'And get rid of the goon, OK?'

Pixel called to Molly, who was waiting nervous outside the door. Somewhat miffed, Molly sauntered over to the guard. The two of them walked back towards the marquee. Pixel came back inside, closed and bolted the door behind her, turned on a soft lamp. It was just a kid, lying there, pretty good-looking with it. 'What's your name?' she asked him.

'You can call me Marco.'

'Do you mind…'

'Go right ahead.'

Pixel walked over to the deck. She turned up the volume a touch, and then, slowly, lingering, let her left hand rest exactly one millimetre above the spinning vinyl. She was waiting, poised like a cat for the beat. Now! She brought the hand down, added some black bass of her own.

'Oh!' sang the figure, in time to the scratching. 'Oh, I like that, I surely do.'

'OK.' Pixel mixed the music down to a soft but funky back-beat. 'What do you want?'

The figure took a bite of his apple. 'How do you do it? That's all.'

How do you do it? How do you get to scratch like that? What's behind those gloves? Is it true you've made a pact with the Devil? What's the secret? What's the deal? Why no interviews? What's behind the air of loneliness so cultivated? When do you smile? Why so distant? Who's the shadow that taught you? How do I get to be like that? Can you teach me? How much does it cost? The same questions again and again. And to throw all that hard-earned pop mystery away, all over a lousy 12-inch single from the last century? Come off it. No way. And even if this Marco kid says, 'There's more where that came from', which he does, well even then… to give in so easily, well, maybe, just a little, almost…

'Why do you want to know?' asked the DJ. 'To sell the story?' 'I want to be brilliant, of course.'

'You're a DJ?'

The kid nodded. 'I'd like to be.'

'There are easier ways. With access to records like this…'

'I can get records. No problem with the records. I just don't… I don't know what to do with them. I can't make the people move. They won't move for me.' Pixel Juice nodded. Maybe, just maybe she was remembering herself at his age; remembering the fear of the empty floor. And the desire that made her go so far in finding the secret. The sacrifices she had made along the way.

'I'll do anything,' the kid said. 'Anything.'

So then, and slowly then, Pixel Juice peeled off the glove, the left-hand glove, the black covering. And her hand glinted hard and silver and tarnished in places. The noise it made, the soft whirr and click as the fingers unfolded one by one, hinged on tiny levers, and longer, far longer than any human fingers had ever reached. The sight and the sound of the revealed hand made Marco gasp; in wonder, not surprise. The wonder of the expert mechanism, not the surprise of the fact, because he had suspected as much.

'You're a robot.'

'No. Only my hand. The rest is real."

'Can I… can I touch it?'

Pixel Juice nodded, and the kid reached out to stroke the warm, pliant metal. 'Nice job,' he said. 'Very nice job. Must've cost something.'

Pixel Juice nodded, but would not name a price.

'OK…' Marco drew back. That's the bass revealed. What about the right hand? The treble hand.'

But the DJ shook her head. 'No. That's all you're getting.' Already she was pulling the glove back on. 'Thank you for the vinyl. Now leave.'

'I've heard metal music, a thousand times. That's nothing compared to what you do. There's more. There must be more. The right hand-'

'I have tolerated you long enough, young man. This trailer is alarmed. I need only press a button.'

'Be my guest.'

Pixel tried it.

Silence, and the slow smile of the young man that said, what's it to be then? And then he produced a gun from somewhere, a blunt home-made affair.

'You wouldn't want to know,' answered Pixel. 'Believe me, you wouldn't.'

'Let me decide.'

'It's about evolution. And you're not ready.'

'Not ready? Evolution? I am. I am ready. I'm evolved.'

'With a gun in your hand?'

'Bitch.'

The whole night swung around that word, as though waiting for it to be said.

Pixel Juice went for the door, but Marco was easy on his feet. There was a struggle, and then she had him around the neck, so easy, her black-gloved, bass-driven hand around his thin white neck. And the mechanism tightened at her will, the long stretched fingers, following algorithms.

And the kid… the kid… ahh…

It was going further than he thought it should, especially when the loud report filled his head with fire, and her body relaxed against his.

Marco dropped the gun. Blood was on his suit, his best jacket. Apple juice and blood.

Pixel's left hand was still clamped around his neck.

With both his hands, his thin, human hands, Marco tried to prise the metal fingers loose. But the DJ was still alive, barely alive, enough to keep the mechanism working. Marco's hands were sweaty as he struggled for air, release, a way out of a good night gone superbad. Finally, the woman's body went limp, the black-gloved hand opened slightly, but then locked into position. Final position.

Able to breathe now, at last, if only just, Marco considered his plight. He was searching for the old cool, the cool and the fire that had made him scheme for this. He should've been in, out; swap the record, find the secret, do the deal. Sure, maybe a little threat here and there, whatever it took, but not a killing.

Was she really dead? He couldn't tell. He looked down at the body that hung from his neck. Her other hand, the right hand with the yellow glove, was hanging limp, the fingers touching the floor.

Noises then, from outside: and a knocking on the trailer's door, a banging on it, and people outside, talking, shouting. The gun. He realized finally that he had fired the gun. He'd never meant to.

Fuck!

There was a face pressed against a window. What must they have seen?

Marco let his suddenly tired body slide to the floor. DJ Pixel Juice was now lying on top of him, on his lap. Marco reached over for her right hand. Almost distractedly, he noticed it was still moving, the last part of her still alive. With the black knowledge that he might as well finish this, he started to tug at the yellow glove. The hand inside it, he could feel, was warm, and very soft, and filled with a vibrant pulse. Finally, he got the glove off, finger by tight finger, and then the shank of it, finally.

Spectrum glow. Her hand was rainbowed in a thousand bright colours. Out of her sleeve, out of her wrist, throbbed a bundle of flutterings, a cascade of life upwards and along and stretched out, making only the shape of a hand. The shape of wrist, the shape of palm, the shape of fingers, five. The hand grew, lengthened, rose upwards, took flight, separated, became a cloud of colours following the music through the air.

All he could do, the boy, was gasp aloud.

The colours! The colours!

Her hand was made of butterflies.

He was screaming as the goon guards broke open the door.

BASSDUST

So they catch these beetles, right, they live in South America. And they pull the wing-cases off them, and they grind these down to a fine, fine powder. That's what the guy says, anyway. It's this crimson stuff, like blood-coloured. And what you do is, you sprinkle this dust on the record, old-style vinyl, you know, and then give it some scratch injection with the old bejewelled needle. And it's like - Hey, Mr DJ! Hit the club slippage! Groove eternal on the jelly-up moment, oh come on! collapse my dancing heart, I beg you. I mean, you ain't never heard bass like it. Like it's the reflection of the moon's bass in the ocean, that far down. The crowd were doing a floorgasm. It's true, I tell you, listen to me. And I wouldn't mind but just a sprinkle of this stuff near burned the place down, so I'm thinking what could I do with an ounce. So, yeah, I buys it off the man. Strange-looker he was and all, thin as a stiletto's heel, with these cheekbones that met in the middle like a pair of scissors. And it doesn't end there, because the next thing I know he's getting out the old ciggie papers. Making a Rizla Sizzla, isn't he? And I thought I'm up for that, except it's only this bassdust stuff that he's doing the rolling with. No, I swear, this happened. So he takes a backbrain drag, and then he's offering it to me. He says, here you go, mate, have a listen to this. I mean, what? Have a listen, he's saying? So, you know, I have a listen. I mean, I smoke that listen, you get me? All the way down, and the cloud of it fills me, the cloud of the bass fills my veins and all of a sudden I've got this fucking jazz funk living inside me. And I wouldn't mind but I don't even like jazz funk. Trouble is, I can't get the tune out of my head, it's like a beetle flying around in there, like the bassdust has turned back into wings. And he says, It's there for ever now, but that's OK, you can do the remix. How's that then? I ask. And he says, Oh, you need to buy some dub juice for that. Dub juice? I ask. And he says, Sure, I got some right here. So I have to buy this new stuff and swallow it and then I'm like, wow, you know, like a version, dubbed for the very first time…

EVENTS IN A ROCK STAR'S LIMOUSINE

Now, it begins. Let's rock! Let's crack this baby wide, wide open. Tear it down, bring the slaughter on. Ain't nobody here but us chickens. Drive the hellmobile!

Yes, he wanted to ride alone. We have his sworn statement, and the ride itself is captured on video - including footage from an in-vehicle camera - as well as being traced from above by satellite. All evidence can be viewed. His spoken testimony, recorded during the drive, certainly reveals a fragmented mind ill at ease with itself, but at no time does he voice any doubts as to his volunteering for the task. Let it be known also that we offered to have a robot drive the car. This was refused. David Pool had been too greatly affected by the original accident to allow its replication be handled by anyone (or anything) but himself. Also, as the inventor of the controversial Roadmuse system, he claimed he was more in tune with its complex algorithms than any machine could ever be.

Reluctantly, we had to agree with this.

It was imperative that this second drive should mirror the first one in all possible details. Accordingly it was at precisely the same time - 2.15 a.m. - and from the same place - the car park of the Burgess Shale Hotel in Manchester - that David Pool started the experiment. The car was the exact same type (with slight modifications for the purpose of the experiment) - a powder-blue Rolls-Royce Hesperus Limousine. And the night, as far as the forecasts could tell us, would be similar to the first in its weather patterns, traffic conditions (thankfully quiet due to the lateness of the hour) and other environmental attributes.

We did everything, perfectly.

Pool's first words on the commentary tapes are, 'Now, it begins.' Then he laughs, as though aware of the somewhat portentous nature of the utterance.

The only real difference between the two drives was the identity of the person in the car. We could have no control over this, other than fixing certain weights and governing devices to Pool's clothing; devices precisely calibrated to have exactly the same effect upon the vehicle's suspension and centre of gravity as the original driver did, this being the ageing and somewhat overweight rock singer, Lucas Novum.

We did everything. Everything, except tell the authorities of our intentions.

At 2.17 a.m., David Pool turned away from the hotel, left, into Peter Street. Our two monitoring vehicles followed behind the Rolls, keeping a judicious distance so as in no way to affect the outcome of the experiment.

Information recovered from the original vehicle's data banks has provided us with a partial model of the drive; it was this model that Pool followed as, at 2.21 a.m., he turned on the limousine's music system. He heard an exact copy of the music played during the first vehicle's drive. Pool then deactivated the manual drive of the limo, resting his fingers only lightly on the now self-turning steering wheel.

'Let's rock,' Pool murmurs; again, following the script.

From now on the music would be the engine.

Gonna make me some turmoil, slam some on it. Slice a hole in the night, climb on through, get my licks from the lunar kiss. Oh yeah, I'm la creme de la bass, baby.

The otherwise strait-laced Professor Pool seems to have wholeheartedly taken on Lucas Novum's speech patterns and vocabulary, indeed his whole personality, once in the vehicle. Pool gave us no indication that he was going to adopt this manner prior to the experiment. Obviously he had studied the recovered tapes from the crash at great length, in order to copy precisely the words spoken (or sung) during the original drive. Perhaps Pool felt this 'identification' was a vital part of successfully replicating the journey.

Of course, we cannot completely rule out the fact that David Pool had shown evidence of substantial mental breakdown since the rock star's death, a death that the press had relentlessly linked to the use of the Roadmuse system. It was these rumours that had determined Pool to test the system himself; by making the exact same journey, governed by the exact same musical passage, he hoped to vindicate the Roadmuse technology.

As the journey progressed, however, this identification increased alarmingly, until the professor was fairly screaming the rock star's words. We did insist at this point that Pool abandon the experiment, only to be answered with a complete breakdown of communication between our monitoring vehicles and the limousine.

Pool had yanked loose the wires connecting his microphone with the roof aerial. He did not however deactivate the microphone itself, allowing his running commentary to be saved for later analysis. Some ill-advised reporters have posited this as evidence of a battle raging in Pool's mind, between the committed scientist and the wayward rock star.

A little background: On 15 October of last year, Lucas Novum had played a concert in Manchester, with his band, ElectroSpasm. The concert had been a resounding success, as befits his status as one of the world's most revered rock musicians. However, the after-gig party at the Burgess Shale Hotel disintegrated into a violent argument between the singer and the rest of the band. Lucas had then left the hotel to take an early morning drive around his home town, the city that had given him his stepping-off point to global pop dominance. He did not bother to wake his chauffeur. We know that this need to escape, like the argument that preceded it, was fuelled by a copious amount of recreational drugs on Novum's part. Indeed, the actual route taken by the limousine was a random, twisting pathway through the lonely city, governed only by the rock star's overcharged desires.

It was a journey that would take just slightly less than thirty-five minutes.

Almost one year later, David Pool now mirrored this route, with the in-car music recreating precisely every turn, every change of speed, every variation in the climate; the primitive, pounding rhythms making an expert soundtrack of the drive.

Novum had received an early demo copy of version 2.2 of the Roadmuse Drivetracking system. Developed by Professor Pool at our sonic laboratory, Roadmuse was a real-time feedback engine, with every note of music, every rhythm, every choice of instrumentation created by the movement of the vehicle itself, and the state of the world outside. Our publicity campaign said it all: 'Roadmuse: Life's original soundtrack!'

For the purposes of this free demonstration model, Pool had programmed the Roadmuse system with samples taken from the collected works of Mr Novum himself, and his band, ElectroSpasm. The journey was therefore an improvisation derived from the most basic of musical elements: frenzied drumming, simplistic bass lines, screeching guitar solos, and the occasional high-pitched scream of vocals.

The technology enabling this interaction of life and music was fairly simple; Pool's genius being to invest the interface with a real, interpretative expertise. For instance, at 2.29 a.m. on the original drive, it had started to rain. Earlier systems would have matched this change of climate with a simple, synthesized drumbeat; version 2.2 responded with an altogether darker, more ambient refrain, each drop of rain becoming an echoed note in a brooding, yet elegant melody of the night.

Mr Novum may well have wished he could have produced such charming music from his somewhat limited source material.

Strangely, at 2.31 a.m. on the second drive, it also started to rain, as though this time the music was causing an effect in the real world, rather than the reverse. There is a gasp from David Pool as this happens, faithfully recorded on the commentary tapes.

All the way home, honey. Drive me hard. (Gasp) Oh yeah, I feel the rain falling, baby, all over the world. Lay that wetness on me!

The major improvement that Pool had introduced to this latest version of the Roadmuse system was an increased sensitivity to the feedback engine. Even the slightest change in the car's environment would now have a marked effect on the music produced. He claimed it would transform even the body temperature of the car's occupants into a melody. He also made further claims, for instance that the system would be sensitive even to the thought patterns of the occupants.

At the time we thought these claims preposterous. Now, after studying the results of the experiment, we believe they offer the only possible explanation of what took place during both of these night-ridden journeys. Indeed, it may be that David Pool didn't go far enough in his assessment of the interface's responsiveness.

After aimlessly circling the streets of Manchester for a while, the limousine, and its ghost, were now moving along Deansgate, away from the city centre.

The time was 2.37 a.m.

We believe that Lucas Novum was aiming to travel into Hulme, the village where he had spent his teenage years and first formed ElectroSpasm. The world knows he never made it that far, but only now can we reveal the precise circumstances leading up to the crash.

At 2.42 he turned onto the roundabout at the end of Deansgate. If he was heading for Hulme, he should now have left the roundabout at the Chorlton Road exit. However he continued to drive around the roundabout, and all the way around it, again and again. The music mirrored this circular motion precisely, itself caught in a complex rising and falling fugue of notes, awash with feedback squall.

Finally, at 2.47, he manages to break out of this strange mental state, and to escape the roundabout's embrace, not onto Chorlton Road as perhaps originally intended, but onto the Mancunian Way. He shoots down this stretch of motorway, accelerating quickly, reaching a top speed of 110 m.p.h. He then veers to the left, onto the exit leading towards Princess Road.

Likewise, the music breaks free of its fugal matrix, to ascend into a sudden rush of squealing lead guitar. All the other instruments drop from the mix. At the very end of this musical run, harmonic feedback comes into play, creating an almost ethereal cascade of sound. The guitar's tone is bell-like at this point, and made of pure air.

At 2.49 a.m., Lucas Novum crashes his Rolls-Royce limousine into one of the supporting struts of the motorway's flyover.

The music breaks into fire.

The rock star's last words are, 'The glass! The glass!' A scream of pain we initially took to refer to the breaking of the windscreen.

David Pool was meant to abandon the experiment at this last moment. His intention to do so is plainly stated in his signed contract. We, as a company, feel we did all in our power to ensure his safety. Alas, we could not control the experiment fully.

Pool's last words are slightly different from the rock star's; for the professor screams instead, 'The glass! The looking-glass!' It is his only divergence from the script, and this tiny clue has enabled us to unravel the mystery of the crash. Any critical comments on Pool's mental state during this, his last musical journey, must be softened with regard to his scientific commitment. For he proved beyond measure that the Roadmuse did in fact turn human thought patterns into music.

What he could not have seen until those final moments was how the sensitivity of the interface fed back into the user's mind. The Roadmuse system not only turned thoughts into music; it turned music back into thoughts.

The first crash, like the second, was caused by the rock star's drug-addled brain creating a melody of destruction. Caught in the feedback loop of this suicidal music, and programmed to reflect it endlessly, the vehicle took the only route left open.

In effect, both limousines crashed into mirrors.

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THE SILVERING

Possibly, you could say that one evening, late in the future, all the mirrors in the world decided to join together. Whilst most people would consider mirrors merely as reflective surfaces, some of the more mystical religions proposed them to be doors, into some other, deeper realm. Rather now, see them as veins; the veins of some vast hidden creature along which light can travel. A creature with blood photons.

For centuries this creature knotted its veins together, in such a way that each journey of light came back to its starting point. Thus, we saw ourselves. But now, with this joining at the silver, each mirror reflected not the astonished gaze of the owner, but the equally shocked expression of another, stranger face.

A stranger's face.

At which you could only grimace, or bellow, or stand dumbfounded in front of.

We have to imagine the mirror creature shrugging itself, perhaps, and coming out of the shrug with its tangle of veins rearranged into a new pattern. Perhaps it didn't mean this to happen. Perhaps it did.

Destroying the mirrors brought no respite, for each replacement mirror bought, or indeed created, would still reflect the same stranger's image. Also, it was quickly noted, no matter where in the world the viewer was, no matter through which foreign mirror he or she gazed, the same partner would always be waiting there.

This phenomenon became known as the Silvering. In time, the imagined monster through which the rays of light ran was called by the same name.

The exact mathematical shape that the Silvering's veins would have to follow, for the process to take place, was discovered to be a highly complex eleventh-dimensional curve. The abstract beauty of this curve may have pleased the scientists; but it was of little use to all the billions of people in the world who now found their mirrors completely useless for their given task. To take a most obvious example: how could some young woman with long tresses of flowing hair possibly groom herself in the reflected image of some old, decrepit bald man?

For yes, some men were reflected by women. The Silvering knew no prejudice. The old were mirrored by the young; gays by straights; blacks by whites; the rich by the poor. At first this dissolving of boundaries brought only anger on both sides of the glass. Fortunately, although light waves could travel through the Silvering's veins, sound waves could not. Curses were not heard, but, of course, easily imagined from the expressions on a face.

But then, and only after a very short time, the people of the world came to accept their new reflections, and to work with them. And thus it was that old, decrepit bald men learned how to mime the combing of long golden tresses. And the world was considered a better place for the joining at the silver.

The only distressing moments came about because of a simple mathematical property: each of the Silvering's veins had only two points of entry - a beginning and an end. Because of this, the process only worked when the number of people in the world was an even number. Given the eternal play of birth and death, every so often a person would go to their mirror, expecting their partner to greet them, only to find themselves staring at a blank space, an emptiness, a terrifying void.

This phenomenon was known as the Clouding, and brought about an avoidance of all mirrors, until such day as the global population turned back from odd, to even, and all the veins of light had both beginnings, and endings.

A new face would appear to embrace your reflection, and the smiles were perfectly copied. Making balance in the world.

Until the Silvering shrugged once more; not only through space, but through the past and the future as well. So that possibly one day, late in the evening, you could say that all the mirrors of all time…

BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS

I was dining out with Kid Signal the other day, when he happens to mention a new player in town, some girl making a nice little fish-pie out at the casino. 'Monkey Funk, they're calling her,' says the Kid, feeding his face, 'and quite obviously born to angle. Want to check her out? Maybe to get rid of the worm, and a little something extra for me and the mouse?'

'Just keep eating,' I told him. 'And leave the worm out of this.'

The Kid was a fine experiment; the mouse that lived inside his stomach was a friendly little creature, if kept well fed, and an expert on all the latest rumours.

Some of us weren't born so lucky.

I threw the Kid a fish, just a tiddler, mind, for the tip-off.

Then I lose it. Something gets eaten, and it's all just darkness until I'm riding on board this tramcat, crammed in tight and sweaty. I swear I was the only halfway-human on board.

The tram was a moving zoo, filled to overload with snakegirls, dogboys, pigpeople, birdbrains. All the specimens. Screechings and roars and a right old ruckus they made, about how this was gonna be their luckiest ever day.

Yeah, right. I'd heard it all before, a thousand times or so. But if this new girl in town really did have some monkey in her, that was way up the food-chain, maybe I could finally catch enough moneyfish to get my head laundered. Sure could do with one.

We all tumbled forth at the outskirts of town, into the catpark. The crazy herd rushed for the casino gates, with me following slow behind, feeling this sudden emptiness. The skullworm was nibbling at something vital, and another bit of my sorry life drifted away. Something about my mother, or was it my girlfriend, I can't remember. What the hell was it?

Darkness.

In the foyer I changed some fish into chips, and then sauntered into the Fractal Roulette room. The place was jammed, wall to wall sucker. Tony McHool was playing a wheel, nursing his cobra the same time. Tony was one of my sure-fire bets; a skinny kid and skinnier snake I'd found playing poker in some dogdive down town. The snake was wriggling out of his shirt, and I knew for a fact where it was joined to him, because he showed me in the Gents when we signed the deal. I won't go into the gruesome details, but after that I just had to loan him some fish to play with. McHool was now gambling a shark on all or nothing. Always a bad bet, even with a snake to help you.

'Do you know a Monkey Funk?' I asked him.

'What's that? A new disease they're testing us for?'

He looked nervous, the snake also. 'Are you sure?' I asked. 'Because she's been winning some lately.'

'Leave us alone, please. The wheel is spinning.'

Sure it was. This wheel of misfortune, containing all the numbers of the universe and then some. Stakes were high, with this tiny marble spinning around like a dying planet; coming up minus 7.01377, gravity-bound.

So close, but no shark, not even a salmon. McHool made a curse, strangled his snake a little, and then started to gather up what was left of his shoal. I stopped him at the door to the Hyperdice room. 'You're betting mighty high these days, Snakedick,' I said. 'You want to give me my share yet?'

'We're not with you any more, Tapeworm. We're working for Mr Pork these days.'

I shook my head, let the snake hiss at me for a while. There was nothing much I could do, except follow them through.

Hyperdice. Throw the numbers along the green baize; watch them tumble and fall, into and out of existence. Watch the croupier as she follows the dice with her alien eyes into the next untumbling. A four-dimensional crap shoot. Thirty-six numbers the hyperdice contains, only six of which exist in our world. Our paltry, little world…

There was nothing doing in there, no sign of anyone looking even faintly monkey-eyed, never mind the full fur-job that Kid Signal had promised. I tried a pike bet on twenty-seven. The dice came up with twenty-nine spots from another realm. So close, but no pike, not even a king prawn. Not even a fried cod, and absolutely no chips.

One time, I was sure of a good angle, because there ain't nothing like a worm to catch a big fish. Now, it was all I could do to even remember which planet the numbers came from.

I was about set to head for the Quantum Poker room, when who should come strolling up but Cleetus McPork, his very own self, with his twin piglets growing one on each hand. 'Tapeworm,' he grunts. 'Go grovel. This is my patch now.'

'Who says so?'

'Pinky and Perky, who else?' and he waves his piggy hands around till they're squealing.

Now then, hear me out, I could have taken out those two little squealers easy in a square fight, but Mr Pork had a mean litter of pigboys in tow. And in the centre of the meatpack, this beautiful girl of midnight fur. Monkey Funk no doubt, and Mr Pork had beaten me to the prize.

But something sure got to me even just looking at her, and her looking at me the same, with eyes of luminous human. Like she knew who I was, deep down where even the worm can't go. And as though he knows he's being beaten…

Dark time.

The next thing I remember, I'm being hauled into Mr Pork's personal tramcat, which was a beast of a thing and fitted out like a brothel circa 2017, all leopardskin and tortoiseshell. There was a framed picture on the wall of a little mouse with a human ear growing out of its back. According to legend, this was the First of All Living Patents, and Mr Pork genuflected to it. Then he sits Monkey Funk down all nice and soft and orders all his pigboys to wait in the next room.

'Make yourself at home, Tapeworm,' he says, pouring himself a shot of something, glass in one piglet's mouth, decanter in the other. Neat trick. 'Fancy a splash?'

'What is it?' I asked with a cheap smile. 'Pig Swill?'

'Actually, it is. Vintage Swill, mind. From my own cellar.'

'I'll skip.'

He settled his bulk down next to the monkeygirl, put one of his piglets around her shoulders. Pinky or Perky? I never could tell them apart. The girl didn't seem to mind, not that much. I guess a girl with fur can put up with much of anything.

'So, Tape,' starts the pigman, 'I hear you've been having a spot of bother.'

'Nothing I can't handle.'

'Not what I heard. What I heard, your brain's being eaten. What I heard, your tapeworm's set to erase. Can't be nice, losing all those lovely memories. You tried the Patent Office?'

'Sure. They claim it's my fault. Been feeding it the wrong stuff, they reckon.'

'Bunch of pures! They're happy enough to pay us for the experiments, but when it comes to back-up, eh? Nothing at all. Now one of my boys, his pig-part started playing up. Starting taking big chunks out of him. Wasn't pretty, not at all. Took ages to get the stains out.' Here, he lovingly smoothed his leopardskin sofa. The sofa purred deeply and arched its back to receive the strokes. 'I paid for the operation, of course. Bootleg doctor.'

'What happened?'

'Successful, if rather ugly. Of course, I had to lay the man off. I mean, what use is a man without some pig inside him? Isn't that right, baby?'

The girl let her furry tail rest teasingly on Mr Pork's giant thigh, although whether she was teasing him, or me, I couldn't say.

'The thing is,' the pig continued, 'I'd rather have you on my side, than fighting against me. After all, there's only so many patents with the fishing gift. What do you say? You want that operation?'

'It's a kind offer, Mr Pork, but… I'm happier alone, you know? Lone wolf.'

'I knew a lone wolf once, proper one. Strange guy, couldn't stop howling at the moon. Had to have him put down in the end.' With that, he pressed a button on his tortoise table and the whole tramcat purred into life. The room rocked slightly as the vehicle unfolded its legs. Even the table was surprised: it made a dash for the door, maybe half a millimetre an hour. I wasn't quite that fast.

'Hey, what is this?' From the window I could see we were moving away from the casino.

'Please, Mr Worm, do sit down. You'll have an accident.'

I was already thinking about the accident I would be having, and maybe of trying for Pinky and Perky, maybe ripping both those squealers off at the root, when the pigboys come cruising through the door, sweaty and heavy, and the next bit the worm has already taken, taken into darkness.

That's why I have to write this down, to try and capture the story before it disappears.

Out of the darkness, I remember running through the streets with this Monkey Funk at my side and the grunts coming up close behind. We were set loose inside a vast genetic estate. From all sides came the pungent smell of sex, big vats of it where they brewed the primordial soup. I could hear the tramcat getting closer and the trotters of the littermen but I didn't dare look back, just kept on running. It was all I could do to keep up with the monkey, especially when she started to swing up a ladder attached to one of the vats.

Climbing wasn't something I'd gone in for lately, but I was dragged along by the fear. The vats were the size of churches and open at the top, with an observation platform around the outside edge. Looking down made me feel sick because a lump of something was swimming around in there. God knows what. So I turned to look back over the other side.

The pigboys were in deep-trough mode of course, because have you ever seen a pig climb a ladder? One of them pulled out a gun. The metal below me was punched through by the bullet, and a stream of the soup came spewing out of the vat. Somebody screamed down there as the stuff hit them. Then the tramcat starts to climb the vat, and would have done OK if Pork hadn't been so extravagant with the on-board accessories. One second the vehicle was creeping up towards me, the next overhanging itself as the patio and miniature golf course on its back slowly shifted the centre of gravity.

Like any cat through history it tried to land on its feet, doing that mid-air dance-craze twist that nearly always worked. Nearly always… but this time its dug-in claws took a side of the vat with them. Too much weight.

We didn't stay to hear the cries of the pigboys as the whole soup came down that night. Monkey Funk just took my hand and together we jumped from vat to vat, from species to species, from darkness to darkness to…

I've just read the above entry to Monkey. Every night we do this, me reading from the old diaries as the memories fade away, her trying to put the past together for me. She claims she was a childhood friend of mine, that we used to go stealing fish from the vats when we were young, and that's why she'd rescued me from the Pork, but I have to take her word for it.

I have to take everybody's word for it these days.

It's strange, but I'm quite ready for the day when the worm takes everything. I don't even think about the operation any more. I don't know, maybe the worm's doing me good. Just to live, forever now. Yeah, whatever. But reading the diaries is frustrating, and this may well be my last journey back. There's too many things I read about, they don't make sense any more.

I can't remember what Kid Signal looks like, for instance, and what the hell is a hyperdice? So far gone, I can't even remember what I look like myself, without the use of a mirror, or the look in Monkey's eyes as we kiss.

And all the stories disappear, one by one by one…

PIXEL DUB JUICE

NIGHT SHOPPING

And, years later, when Little Tommy was older, much older and not so very little, he was trying on a changing suit in the ninth shop, when he felt a slight pain in his forehead. Asking the assistant for a glass of shadow, he sat down for a moment to calm his nerves. The suit, noticing his mood, loosened itself around his neck and chest, and then turned from its show-off silver to a soothing pastel blue. The shadow juice covered the pain with its dark and gentle hand, and between them, the suit and the shadow did their best to relieve Thomas of his discomfort.

The assistant asked him if everything was all right, and Thomas said it was, thank you, and how much was the suit? So a deal was made, and the assistant asked if he would like it wrapped, and Thomas said no, he would wear it now, and please dispose of his old clothes.

Then Thomas stood up, and went to transfer his wallet to his new jacket. The jacket made a pocket just where Thomas's hand was resting. But when he put his hand inside the pocket, something hard and warm knocked against his fingers. He pulled his hand back out, to see that it now held a key, a golden key. The assistant was surprised to see it there, and was puzzled, because the pocket had not existed until a second ago.

So Thomas started to walk back home, wondering whether a tramcat would be wiser, knowing his condition. Instead, he decided the walk would do him good, and the suit agreed, changing itself into a sturdy anorak, and the shoes into walking boots. Soon, however, Thomas found himself lost, something that had not happened in so many years, and he wondered if they had built a new shopping extension, because he had never seen such a precinct before.

He went into the first friendly kiosk, whose counters were filled with compass bugs of various directions. He bought one for his home-shop, swallowed it, and immediately felt better. Letting the beetle inside his stomach guide him, he set off confidently through the strange and twisted streets. But as he travelled farther, the places became less and less familiar. More and more of the stores were boarded up, and the streets almost deserted. Eventually he came to an area he thought he recognized: a small patch of lawn with a single tree, and a bench. And here, Thomas rested for a while, and slept. And his suit, slowly and gently, became a long, flowing nightshirt. He dreamed, for the first time in years, of his departed mother, and the brave shopping expeditions of his youth.

When he awoke, it was already artificial night, and the artificial moon hung from the precinct's sky. Strangely, his suit did not change from its long flowing shape. The square was quite deserted, and only one shop still whispered in faint light. The sign above the doorway was in a language he could not understand. He could no longer feel the directions in his stomach, and the headache was shadowless and almost like a long-lost thought.

So, he went into the shop.

It was filled with all the things he had ever bought, and all the things he had once dreamed of buying. The penny ghosts and the bird shoes, the word egg and song biscuit, the smoke-maps and dogseeds, and all the shadows in the world were on display like pieces of the night's calming sky. Reaching into a sudden pocket in his gown, Thomas found there a single penny of the old money. With it, he bought a lonely, whispering ghost.

Upon leaving the shop, he saw, or thought he saw, a group of people sitting beneath the tree on the patch of lawn. One of them, a woman, called to him by name. The children around her begged him to hurry.

And his suit changed to ashes.