 
The Man Who Hated Light

By

Steve Merrick

Copyright Steve Merrick 2017

Smashwords Edition

Shock walks in a different way to the man, it laces through the conscious mind, building up dose by dose till it gets to a level of toxicity that can only be matched by a lethal jolt of radiation. Take a human any human and they can be brought low by the repeated shocks that time and space will inevitably throw at them. Oh look there is one now, it may be the lost methodology of his footsteps that give him away, or the inner view he is obliquely translating the world with. Watch as he stumbles shambolic through these dusty streets. Bathe in his temporary downfall and vanquish your compassion as you watch his mind tumbling from sanity's fragile grip. If I with my viral capacities look closer, past his cameras, or his jeans, I see a man letting go of all logic, shaped by the events that have repeatedly unfolded in his world to be twisted so out of shape that his own thoughts are unrecognisable to him. Life itself is little more than a complex sequence of traps to this person, this shapeless geography his mind is now inhabiting has become his everything.

As a virus I could say that it wasn't always this way for this person. Once with a curious mind he had searched, using his camera's to see elements of this world that otherwise would have remained blind to his heart and thoughts. That curiosity itself sent the light fetishist out into the world, a birth of sorts in this visual sea on planet Earth. So he wandered far and wide until this point, a child being born caught here, and aged ones death caught there, throughout the worlds of industry and commerce he watched, witnessed and created the image of a world, using the most basic of tools imaginable. Light. Yet all of that is now lost, light is an enemy. Even here as the sun sets his eyes are being assaulted by the spongelike absorbance of the vivid light that is scattering richly around his eyes. Bless my mitochondria he has seen something ahead.

A mirror in a smashed window lies half on the floor, shattered, and like a moth to a flame he is drawn to it. Looking for a hope that he could anchor his now turbulent mind within himself. Fill his self with his self, possibly even re attach his own sanity. For now he kneels and stares almost through the unfamiliar face that is reflected in his thoughts. For now he longs for blindness, I could be stating the obvious but this photographer has witnessed the worlds of humanity, he has seen the lack of humanity in this human world, and as he looks at the pale eyes he see's the cosmic joke of a photojournalist in front of him. As the sunlight fades the street light picks up the slack, harshly reflecting each grain of desert dust in the air, and the man who has reached a particular point in his mind sits on a wall.

Next to him the sea corrupts the shore as it flows to the rocks, trails of water trickle harmlessly over his shoe, as he watches the water crash quietly against the shore, the suede absorbs the wet, darkening, yet he is oblivious to it. Caught up in spiders web of thoughts, thoughts that whisper to the truth that he must never acknowledge. It wasn't the fatal nature of this day that has killed him, yes even blood can flow beautifully through a lens. No it was the waste of it, the waste of all of this, the lack. He wasn't a particularly evil man, but then you wouldn't have called him good either, not that that matters at all in the long run. He was just tired of the waste, the loss and all that that implies. He was tired of the beauty of it all, that beauty of light was in the starkest of contrast to the short comings of humanity.

For now as he watched the water freezing slowly, in his mind he was tired of the blindness's of others, tired of their inability to see the wonder in it. Curling in a ball he slept on that rocky out crop of land, listening to the sea. He longed for that blindness of others, and not to see any more. Yet even with his eyes closed he could see, as his nose smelt the muggy crispness of the ocean and his skin felt the spray he slept. Wide awake dreaming of blindness...........

ALTERED STATES OF HEART AND MIND IN THEIR PARALLEL PLACES

So I lay there, I had seen a reality, a glimpse of the worlds ahead, I had felt the bitterness of journalism crushed by pressure's weird, I had touched the tangents of a future, not like some mystic pagan sacrificing to a tree, nor like a pseudo delusional epileptic maid of Cristian folk law. My brain had analysed it all, and in that architecture of mind and space it had seen an inevitability, an end to those dreams of bright futures for our species. I had no illusions that journalism had died, just like the flower that was democracy had. So I lay there, the options were simple, sacrifice the cameras and the realities of the lenses creation, in favour of fighting back, in every way possible to avoid this future we now walk through. Ask yourself this though, at this fork in my life, I decided to keep the faith with the cameras and a promise I had made to myself, but in doing so failed to embrace the violent or necessary actions that could have changed this world we now live in. In my lack of actions violent, did I accidentally became a traitor to my species? But what of those other universes parallel to ours, what if I had embraced that rage and anger, what if I had chosen that path on that sunny Lebanese morning........

ALTERNATIVE 21.

Yes I loved the woman I was with on that morning but she could off fuck with her socialist duplicities, nor could she have tamed that which beat in my heart, like a memory genetic of battle drums past, it raged, it was in this twizzle that I thought. I thought of the perilous fates of humanities ahead, and realised that life is never measured in mere length but in that twisted shape of it's path, life has nothing to do with it's ending. It is but moments of a geological clock that we see though our optics, smell through our nose and taste with the touch of tongues against each other. Yet as I sat in front of a computer it was there, clear as day that my ending would have nought to it, not even merit. There on those electronic binary entrapped pages was the first of my enemies, seen, fouled by their actions and thoughts to die at my hands. The bitterness of this one old man, who like a magician of olde folklore stood with blood stained finger tips gloating, yes this baron from the world of petrols would be the first.....

Fortune herself smiled upon me as I met the arms dealer, yes he was on my list but for this time I needed him, his death would match his redundancy to my purpose, so I smiled with menace, and praised the time space for making firearms a plenty available in Lebanon, for then it was a short hop to Cyprus, and that vintage Villa that the magician hid behind. His guardians slobbered in the baking sun like dogs, obedient for their supper, and I sat watching through my site, as they ignorant of their imperilled position dreamt of their luxuries. Betraying themselves in their own sea of denials these vile protectors patrolled slovenly secure in their weaponry. The barrel of the M14 followed them slowly as I watched, her trigger cried for release and still I watched them. Peacefully my mind accepted this change in self, happiness was in the sunlight of it all, and as the dark fell upon this place I struck.

I struck with metal, a sword of old, a leaf of a sword, slipping the wall I assaulted the first who died without even a whimper, just loss to his eyes as he saw his potential flush away from himself. He in that moment felt that irrelevance that I had felt on that evening past, yet his heart had to stop to see it. For there is freedom when you know no relevance, liberation in your facelessness and lack of value, that knowledge of meat. That is liberation. A world without fears. That is insanity, and insanity is now my home. The second dog fell, with a sigh of ignorance as I slipped the blade back from his body his eyes searched mine, finding nothing. Then I was inside this corpulent space of opulence that passed for that first magicians home. Whilst his guardians sat at the gates secure in their powers. He gazed into my face and I stepped into his room as he arose from his desk he placed both hands out in front of him, yet I danced forwards with one jump I was on him. My eyes and self empty of anything but peace watched as his mind, lost in the dreams of dominance, thinking of negotiations or bribes perchance, looked through me, calculating me, he was still lost in his math of who, when my sword sung in his heart, and bloods of his life like slate slipped through him to the floor. Within the merest of times moments I was gone.

Dissolving from the scene of a crime, that much was simple, when the crime has not yet shown it's face to his guardians, then you can escape with ease. I crested the hill around the villa and was then away to vanish as if I never happened at all. Then and there as my savagery sought its voice, as my violence became aware, there I saw it descend. Slick dark with a dull shine of light flowing across it's surface. Like a murderous ape I watched it, then with gentle pressure flicked the M14's safety catch forwards giggling at the concept of lethal safety. Was this a sign of government, or an as yet unknown security measure. The strange machine settled, it's sank slightly into the dried ground beneath it, then with a slight pressure from within came a short pop like sound, a part of it sprang upward but paused inches into it's journey, then almost as if it was being held by an invisible maiden it began to slowly open.

The tired cold blue of the moonlight glanced in a sinister fashion along it's reflective surface. After infinite seconds of expectation a figure became clear, like some Spartan Hoplite, the figure sat seated, silhouetted by luna's brightness behind it, the helmet was smooth, and of the same darkened green of the suit, armour covered the chest, and strips of some unknown material glanced against his thigh almost as if he were wearing a skirt. Suddenly I realised that the green was off set by different shade in what I would call a tiger stripe pattern. Oh a tiger, a Corinthian tiger, in green ancient Greek style of dress, yet with fluid silence the man slipped gracefully from the innards of the steaming machine. Across his back was a slung rifle, it was of a design I did not know, slick varnished and darkened wood secured the metals of it's design, then as he twisted away from me, the pistol that graced his thigh, that to was not of a shape I knew, a short leaf sword slapped against his leg as he walked away, with the savage looking spear in his hand.

There upon his left shoulder I saw a small Union Jack flag, but beneath it was an oval, a zero, but then he was walking slowly away from me. I raised the rifle to sight upon his head, and he turned rapidly, then with blackened eye slots the helmeted but faceless vision stared at me. Finally he snapped his fingers together with a sharp click and turned again to walk away. I stood frozen in my dumbness and watched him getting smaller, only to feel the intense cold of that tube he had descended in, it had at a distance seemed hot, yet I knew that my finger tips would freeze and adhere to its surface should I have touched it. With that single rational moment my mind awakened, and I as if in some Celtic dream of demonic forest god's followed at a distance, observing him, as he walked into the middle of the clearing. The moonlight made the grass look as if it had snowed, in that fairy tale clearing he lifted the spear and thrust it into the ground. A light throbbed within it, and

with each beat of the light the air around it vibrated, I watched feeling it's throbbing pulse gently against my skin.

He turned like he was on a string, then scanned the forests edge, finally he started to walk towards me. Straight at me. I am no coward so I stepped from that forest with my weapon ready and aimed, he stopped and circled around me then when he was firmly held in the sharp moonlight, the man sat. I watched as he undid the airtight seal of the gloves, my mind acknowledged that he was wearing a pressurised suit of some kind, but then as he placed the gloves in his pocket, the man unsealed the Ancient Greek corinthian style helmet he was wearing. There came the same popping sound as the tube had, finally and with a slight struggle, the helmet was pulled away from his head, as his chin and teeth appeared first and then I in my shock saw his face. Shoulder length Gray hair fell with a scruffy grace about his face. I knew that face, and as if my mind were lost to madnesses eternal I lowered my weapon. He smiled and then spoke, but his words came far to fast for my mind to translate them, finally he pulled a box from his belt, then moved the clockwork of its heart and spoke into it.

I knew that aged face more intimately than I could fathom comfortably, he twisted at the nob slowly on the machine and the jabbering that it was screeching out slowed until finally I could hear clear and comfortable English, I recognised my own voice clearly enough as the older version of myself smiled to me.

"Hello from Alternative Zero."

SOME SAY THE DEVIL IS DEAD.

Casshern, oh watch as this little anthropologists heart pounds absorbed in the movie that is from alternative 21, Gizmobots of violent mania attack each other as the story progresses, whilst emboldened by his bloodstained psyche the hero progresses to the ending. "Hope." Oh how could the enlightened woman from zero have had a chance against this, her mind was awash in concepts, lost in the tragedies of the reality she was visiting. She sits watching it, to your eyes as an inhabitant of this place the frame rate is to fast, yet for her mind it is almost slow. Zero is the closest reality to reality, it is reality, things go quicker there, minds live like sharp darts of thought against the lusher light, and she cannot ever open her mouth here in 21, she wrote painfully slowly two words for the hotel clerk, the words were throat and cancer, she has neither, you see in Zero they defeated cancer many years ago, in Zero the highest IQ's of 21 would be swamped in their own ignorance, they would drown in their lack of imagination. Yet what bothers this little woman from Zero is that the further from reality she gets the slower it all is, she has a god, not a hypothesis, and not a creator, just a kind of advisor, that god by reasons strength is me, a virus writing these saddened words of defeat, so she is bothered at the stillness here, the stagnation and the silence from her usually chatty god. She feels that alienating disconnection, it pains her that they live so blindly here.

All around her is the evidence of destruction as they in their silent screams of isolated self loathing suffer, the news paper pages as she scan's through them almost break her heart, the damages of the aggressors are like a self harming scar to her eyes, yet she does not doubt her will to bring change to them. Standing in her blue jeans she looks at her reflection, by your standards she is vibrantly healthy, yet even the light itself is second hand here, slower, less, even the air that she breaths smells used, but for her it is full of unhealthy carbons from their debauchery with petrol. Her breasts

stand firmly in the mirror as she pulls the T Shirt over her shoulders. Her plastic watch pulses on her wrist and she watches it for a moment, then twisting it's face she looks at the holographic display, they are about to arrive, the pathfinder had sent the signal. Gazing through the map she picks up a large canvas shoulder bag, then with it firmly secured on her shoulder and with her sandals in her hands, she walks from the room through the hotel and into the clean warmth of the muggy night.

Lovers stroll oblivious to her presence along the small harbours sea front, to their perception the air is sweet, the light is gentle and at least from my perspective they have each other to hold on to. Our little anthropologist scuttles quickly past the scene and walks up the fallow hill heading for the valley, longing to be out of their sight so she can speed up and move as she normally would. There is pleasure in being a virus, there is subtlety in my fingerprint's wherever you find DNA, and as she slowly trudges up the hill, I can feel my doppelgänger here in this reality as well, but where I had evolved to be what I am, the one here is but a shadow of the original, something less than a reflection of my greater self. In mammalian terms it would be as insignificant as a toenail clipping, I can not rejoice when I feel my alter ego retreating to it's darkness's, not feeling fear, that would be too human but it retreats almost tidally, as if it is repulsed by my field of influence.

She stops and scans around her, in the darkness her eyes need no night vision, as she can see almost all of the obstacles ahead.

Eyes evolved in another dimension connect the darkness with an accuracy unknown to 21. I know that ahead of her is a crazed photojournalistic reflection of the man who landed minutes ago, I also think of the drop-ships above her as she finally alone and free of observations sings to herself and like a blurring particle of light runs for the clearing. The song would have sounded like some mythical fox like beast of hunter gathering folklore, screeching from the darkened forest, yes I am that old, I was hidden within those earliest examples of your greater tribe, Hidden deeply entwined in their DNA's mitochondria. By my standards having been born in those darkness's that followed the big bang my own evolution is as much a shock as it is a pleasant surprise. I was all ignorance and ribbons back then, slight flickers of the inevitability I was to become. Forming and reshaping in that lost dance of stardust, I am stardust, you are too, all of us formed in that dance of passion that happened at the beginning. I was all about darkness back then, as this world started to form. Yet with evolution came evolutions, a viral unity that formed the creation typing these words to you through another human mind.

Yet as a quantum being I was formed in that mass of ribbons, Ribonucleic acid, well that is me and as we replicated we became I. Evolving with those consciousness's we inhabited, parallel's, in tandem with the creatures that formed I learned, in a fox or a dinosaur or a geranium, but through humans I grew, the little anthropologist would argue that my self aware consciousness was a genetic lottery of randoms, that I was becoming enlightened, but alas she would be wrong, the new version of the man in the clearing would understand this, you see for mitochondria time is non existent. Living just above the quantum level, created me in the first place, I simply journey back and forth from beginning to end, tweaking yours and other species if you will. On the bright side I do remember the shock of that moment I awakened in the mind of a peculiar spaceman called Kego O'Grady. It came as a shock to realise you had always been somewhere but had never noticed yourself before, however I am in danger of diverting you from this story.

So she ran at her impossible pace to the clearing, and there she saw the two men, one covered in blood, the other she knew far to well. She slowed enjoying the muted moonlight as she approached them and then sat down next to her friend. Both of them looked skyward and slowly the other man

joined them. High above the ionosphere of the planet a small group of ship's had assembled, unnoticed by the technologies of 21 they slipped cautiously forward towards the small blue planet. In one of them another woman stood holding the hand rail and watching the planet slipping past her below. She is from 3, and even to her eyes the planet seems muted, less than it should be, she is also an anthropologist, technically the same as the woman in the clearing, but she is slightly less than that woman is, but 21 is the dullest of the Earths reflections that she has encountered so far, loss, less, a lack of, the vibrancy of the planet was filtered, and the further she got from her reality the less she was inclined to go further.

Gradually her grip on the railing lessened, then after a few moment's she kicked herself back into the ship. She slipped smoothly into her seat and smiled to the pilot next to her, and she thought of the council of six. Six realities that circle zero closely had become a trading sphere, well that is if you look at the arrangement from the perspective of 21. The scientists and explorers from zero had embraced the decelerator and journeyed to the neighbouring worlds. Over time a mutual trade had began, mostly in knowledge, well actually it was the imaginations of Zero that they were trading with, oddly with little in the way of a return, but it was beneficial as in Zero it was seen as a step towards an enlightened future. The woman from 3, is a woman of empire, the British Empire, they had after many thousands of years ousted the Greeks and the strangleholds they had held on the other countries of her version of the Earth. Looking down at the oddity of 21 she smiled at the strange thought that Britain's Empire had come and gone, however she marvelled at the cynical insanity of the colony called the America's.

Whichever reality you inhabit you have to accept the differences that pile up in the greater multiverse, on 3, the only member of the council of six to possess a standing army, the British Empire is massive, taking in parts of China, Japan and a huge chunk of what had been called Russia there. In the reality of 4, Britain was known as the Philosopher Isles, in 5, the fishermen, whilst in Zero itself, Britain was one of many partner countries that were a part of a greater global mechanism of governance known as the Plebes. If you are reading these words and you come from 21, imagine worlds without Hitlers, or Pol Pots, Imagine the peace and love hippy revolution that spread from Ancient Rome with that cities vast legions of lovers, in fact imagine a place without war. Yes for the eyes of someone from 21 that is impossible, yet if you were to ask the people from the utopia that is Zero how they saw it, they would say that their home reality was a work in progress.

Yes that is zero, and the woman from 3 is deep within herself jealous of Zero. She looking at 21, thinks of how the people there would view her, how they would cry out to possess what she has, yet in her thoughts she knows the irrational nature of that jealousy, she know's that she is lucky to be from three and not 21 or 54 or 73 or in fact any other reality, one of the scientists of three had announced that each reality fits its inhabitants like a glove, the man had concluded that if science was the mechanism of overcoming a problem, then each reality had to develop their sciences in the order of the problems that they may face. On zero they combatted disease before they developed gun powder. In 21 they had used the atomic bombs on people twice, but from her point of view 21 was all about war, in 21 people starved, people died of cancer, but they had just started to use drone aircraft to kill each other with, considering their continuous war's and the levels of violence within their cultures, no wonder was it that they had invented the AK47 before they had found a cure for polio. One odd discovery from 21 was that as slow as they were, they had somehow invented the fastest computers in all of the multiverse, they had embraced the internet as it was quaintly called on their world, whilst in Zero, they were at least fifty years behind these developments.

Time is a relative beast when you are shackled by its grip, and on Zero although the people lived at greater speeds than the other realities they also lived longer, take the two men sat in that clearing, one will age faster, talk faster run faster, yet still be doing that as the other genetically identical man dies of old age. On Zero they had focussed on health more than any other subject but then if you look at zero they have an active space programme and at the time of these words a small but self sufficient colony on the planet Mars. All of these strange worlds overlap, and putting aside the odd and curious nature of science, the inhabitants of the Council Of Six's worlds had been getting a kind of toxic feedback from the pollutants that were in use in other worlds. To a scientist of Zero, global warming was little more than a theory, yet when they happened to find the culprits of 21, and the toxicity of their technologies, well the people from those cleaner worlds had to take action.

The little anthropologist would send her reports back to her bosses in Zero or the other realities, in each one she sent they sounded like watching a slow motion suicide on a planet of mad prophets. Each of her reports were met with sighs of disbelief, which considering Zero's free speech policies would be accompanied by public outcries. Even a 21 charity was formed, which in a culture that had never had money was not as straight forward a prospect as it would have been in 21. However over time it was considered essential that a solution to 21 had to be found. It would expand further and further from reality, no matter how slow or violent the peoples of those distant realities were, and to the minds of Zero, it would be an experiment, an experiment that would export itself to the other realities. This was to be the very first attempt in human history to change a reality, and to force enlightenment upon it's peoples. The optimists of Zero were convinced that this would all be over quickly, and as the woman launched her drop-ship down to the unsuspecting planet, she was humming a tune to herself happily.

You see, all of these paragraphs and this fist chapter are simply to tell you how a utopia goes to war.

THE TRAITOR

I was sat and am still sat at this desk writing my testimony, the charges are treason, the place is Britain, yet for the life of me I don't understand how this came to pass. I was about to go on a killing spree when they arrived, spewing fire from the engine as that drop ship descended down upon me. My own mind was spewing fire mirroring those engines and the dull glowing metals of them. I should have been rejoicing at my liberation with that first murder, the mens blood was still slick as it clotted upon my face, the moon rejoiced in its clarity, whilst I plotted my next dissection of the magicians that darkly control our world. Instead I was diverted like a damn does a river or a lake, converting my inner energies away from the necessities of blood and murder. Murderer, yes but treasonous, no that is merely a jest of our elite leaders, yet had I parted ways and stayed true to my course, I believe now that I could have achieved more through murder and artifice than all of the forces of enlightenment combined.

To sleep perchance to dream? Maybe these words are nought more than an elongated suicide note, yet even though I have been stripped of the means to end this farcical trial, this self justification of capitalism, or self righteous blustering, I just wish that I had turned away from their arrival, left them in their fields to spoon-feed the capitalists in their ignorance of the conditions symptoms. They offered everything, straight up, like a poker player displaying four aces before anyone bids,

they thought it was a foregone conclusion, they offered as but one example a cure for cancer of the lungs, just gave it to the world as if it was christmas, then watched as the cure was researched and after three years of work rejected, the rejection made no sense to their eyes, but as a resident of 21 I understood the mechanism of profit. Yet still they tried, inevitably their attempts at reason became soured in the muds off the shore of an ocean of greed, and that greed was only righteous, ennobled by their childish offering of clean energy and cleaner foods. You see they had never had the Roman empire in their history and nor had they ever considered slavery.

Let this perilous lesson in the psychology of 21 unfold, let my trial and this history emerge clear and like still waters in your mind here, as they from Zero offered everything on a plate only to see it thrown like table scraps to the winds, whilst I merely a simple photojournalist have only one wish. I would like the opportunity to kill more of these purveyors of slavery. Perchance that is my dream, but if you know your Shakespeare, you will love this para-dine from one of his quotes. "When our actions do not our fears can and will make us traitors." There is much poetry and symmetric veiled truth in that statement. As an accused traitor I must attest that I never betrayed my heart, only the hearts of others, I have never betrayed my ideals beyond some background consumerism, whilst in reality I am an enemy of all that has me held like an animal in the dock of the court, yes those are what I despise. I long to feel the judges choke at my fierce grip, or maybe squeal as I bludgeon them with my vital caresses and speed them to the river Styx and the ferryman, oh what fools the people from Zero became, they have no real religion, and who knows, maybe what they were lacking in hypothetical deities was their error.

So lost in this dearth of verbiage comes the face of history that I remember, all that I regret, rejoice, regale and reinvigorate with this testimony, that by it's very nature is pre ordained to become a work of redacted inks. Yet even here the hope that I can embrace weapon and unleash a hell upon these moral oppressor's glances in my heart like the doves of peace in the man that I used to be had. Rolling as I am in legal theatres and media tides, in a space and time of the courts where there is not truths face, that face is one that will become twisted, interpreted as the reality is thrown away in favour of rhetoric and the artifice of deception that is now in the 21st century the true face of the law. Deception. When you look at it that way you can see the bind of the lash that has me entrapped within its grasp.

I fear them not, the beatings, nor their water boards, you see I always knew that there is no such thing as truth, truth is an angle of view that you see the facts through, it is mutated by your own moralities, and then twisted into shapes weird by your own inner eye, truth is nothing more than a filter that makes your reality more palatable, so however I view it one truth is the same as any other really.

Picture the politicians of your lands, eyes laced with the vices of power, as tongues like mirrors reflect that which once was glorious, Democracy, see her resplendent in white robes and fulsome of breast, perchance holding a trident and upon a fearsome white steed. In their political hearts lurk heroic names of old, politicians of note, through emulation the illusion of their laurels could be held, these men of history have names that echo cruelly before them, Cromwell and Caesar, one a father of Parliament the other a master of the Senate. Neither of these men was a fool, nor a coward, neither is worthy of the respect that history has bestowed upon them. Yet the men of the now, present themselves like reflections of these heroes of old lore, todays politicians stamp their mark upon a ruined world, whilst truth and honesty are merely reduced to interpretive tools, both Caesar and Cromwell would have mocked it themselves and these are the foundations of our muted

governments. I call our politicians not liars, I merely point out that truth is no longer required, but then it probably never was.

I will warn you of one thing before I write of that first night. Every word of this is a lie.......... ILL

MET BY MOONLIGHT

"Oh look it's trying to rationalise all this, how cute." The Blonde woman had started to place a large checkered towel onto the moistening ground, as droplets thickened upon the blades of grass, each one reflecting the light from it like little razors of sharpened moonlight. "Your pet or name sake should consider sitting, we have a wait ahead of us." I looked at the small machine as her voice screamed into it and was then reduced mathematically to coherence, the machine looked old and futuristic in it's strange blending of design and aesthetic.

"Rationality." The man who was me said, pointing I should sit down with his whole hand.

"Rationalisation for beginners." His voice came out of the box gentler than the woman's had, as my eyes were almost automatically drawn from his face to the sounds that flowed in waves from it's speaker. He clicked his fingers, I jerked to face his smiling visage. "Ignore the box tis just a trickery to enable clumsy conversation." My rifle rested upon my shoulder, the metals of the barrel comforting my fears. "You look to rationalise but do not know how to yet." He moved forwards and then sat with an arm on his knee in front of me. "Here on 21, which by the merry of it is the name that we have given this place, you attempt to comprehend the rationalisations of your own minds, by repressing your emotions, this is wrong, as wrong as the blood of a stranger clotting upon your face." As if to mark his words the woman passed me a dampened cloth so I wiped the capitalists blood from my cheeks as I listened, her eyes searched mine briefly and then she leant back with her head resting relaxed upon his uniformed thigh.

Like strange demons the pair vibrated with a lusher energy, I had no illusions that I could have harmed them by my actions, nor have caught them even at my fastest. "Your moods control your rationalisations, think on this stranger brother, when you are happy does time itself not fly, or even the dullest of light beams fill your heart and mind like the sweetest of honey wine." Like a distorted mirror I watched as he formed his thoughts and looked into very familiar eyes, finally I engaged him by nodding. "Yet when depression strikes does the clock itself not slow as your thoughts are caught in the glue of you own history, the most vivid of light can seem such a trifle at that point can it not?" I scanned his eyes for aberrations of self, yet that which had torn me apart was of no import to this reflected personage. "Timelessness is death, and as emotive beings, what point is there in retranslating your emotions to think and feel coldly, like an airless vacuum, or , more like a river flow fiercely and embrace your thoughts, rationality is in that mixture of emotions and by embracing them you can form the question you are truly longing to ask."

We sat silently as I groped for an emotion, it came like a scream from a pit of grieving loss buried like hoarded pain in my subconscious. Raging torrents of hatred brought spittle to my throat as I looked at him, and my true question formed like an embryo in a pandoras box laced by twisted jealousies. "Why?" I stumbled to create coherence from that tidal flow of venom that was spewing and stirred in my minds eye. As he went to reply I clicked my fingers, as my own irises inflamed themselves with loathing of it all. A life gone sour in a sea of unnecessary despair, a scientist of

sorts gazed through him, knowing he was either of the future or from a nearby place not of this pace. I tasted my inner thoughts racing harmonically with my emotions asunder a thunderous rush of realities combined, as I formed words and found voice once again.

"Parallels, universes, yet you sit untouched by the faeces of my lands, a history that has destroyed my thoughts and ravages my heart as it has broken and shattered in its brittleness, against a rising tide of lack and greed that has surrounded me since my unfortunate birth." He leant back with a slip of a smile forming upon his lips, the woman rolled to face me leaning against her elbow as again she searched through my face. "Yet you sir sit untouched by any of it, how you can be is anything but a myth that is riding on a lie!" His smile formed fluidly as the woman rose kneeling in front of me, her eyes held a curiosity of my now animal status. "How can you see all this and not be destroyed, not become reassembled unrecognisable by this society I inhabit." I shouted those fallow words, but as my voice flowed my mind calmed, the rage flowed to a stop, until quietly with an unnatural calm that no man should be in possession of I spoke with the gentility of a child's ignorant bliss. "Why are you untouched by it?" I sat back in the grass, feeling my fingers caressing it's dew. "How could a doppelgänger of self not feel that which has destroyed me and if you cannot then you must not even be a reflection of me, so how can you exist at all untouched, that is my question of you, for starters at least."

"Untouched?" The woman smiled curiously as he lay back in the grass closing his eyes. "I assure you my husband is not untouched." I was surprised by her coy cheek, the lack of reaction to the question, as she again searched my face, looking for a reflection of the man next to her thigh. "Or can it be that he has been so disturbed at this desperation on this example of the planet you call Earth, that we have come here to change the reality you all choose to live within, destroy it if needs be and in your severance from this greed and corpulence, create a new assemblage of awakened people fulfilling their potentials. Recreating these broken societies anew, that is not because we are suppressing like an angered child our hearts and emotions but because we are reacting with them. We are bringing changes with our emotions and the briberies of our science may speed that pathway to a livelier future for all."

I like the man who was me from somewhere else could see her, was, no, am attracted to her side, not like a moth to a flame, but just like the rhythm of a good piece of music, drawn by its sounds as if to embrace the notes, pulled by this vision and my own senses, to withdraw from her curiosities, I sat in the semi clarity of the moonlight silently thinking. Longing for the innocent I had been, then suddenly they were both moving rapidly as the first of the majestic ships flowed to the ground, pulsing from within, it landed with a silent whisper of rushing warm air.

STRANGERS IN STRANGEST CELLS

Such was the speed of their landing that nobody saw them arrive apart from myself and one Cypriot shepherd, the shepherd was relieved when he realised they weren't an Israeli commando raid, I was surprised at how calmly he accepted the invasion. It was in his mind an irresistible force versus and immovable object and he being caught in the middle of it decided to leave with his small flock and return to his wife and small house. I myself had more of my fatal work to do, so I left the squeaking alternatives to it. None of the invaders stopped us from leaving, so we casually walked to his small holding, where upon meeting his wife I was fed for the second time of that evening. Not speaking their language, we used a primitive method of sign and smiley faces as we ate. Then there came a heavy knocking upon the door.

I groped and indicated I would hide, and from within a pantry cupboard I heard the foreign conversation. Having spoken at a later occasion with the old woman she has filled me in on how it went, whilst to my westernised ears it was so much Cypriot squabbling.

Shepherd. "Oh there are Alien soldiers landing in the high field."

Military Policeman. "Very good sir, but we are searching for this man." A blurry Cctv picture was waved abstractly under the Shepherds nose. The picture was undeniably me.

Shepherd. "Yes he is hiding in our pantry, but the Aliens are in the High Field sir?"

Military Policeman. "Ahh very good we will arrest him and then you can take the corporal to look at these aliens."

I have been arrested before, yet never before was Gomez singing Getting Better in the background nor had I been pinned to the floor by several armed men. Two of whom were destined to become the first POW's of this non conflict. There is a news photo of myself in handcuffs being thoroughly pulled into the Limassol police headquarters. The military police were both British whilst hovering with them were many of the civilian constabulary, one of them shook my hands for providing an entertaining murder to his list of achievements. Having handed over the prisoner to the civilian authority the Sergeant and the Corporal followed the shepherd on their ill fated mission to the hills of Aetokremnos, I thought of the fact that they were going to the oldest known human wells in existence, and then with a deepest of weariness, I felt a stab of regret that it would be unlikely I could kill any more of the capitalists who rule our worlds from behind their successfully closed doors.

From my vantage point what followed was utter un dreamt of chaos. However that was all seen from my cell, blurred, fuzzy and full of fear. Yet as I lay down in the tatty bed in the vomit smelling cubicle, I felt sleep hit me like a hammer, and the confusion of thoughts gave way to the confusion of dreams. Images impacted in my sleep. Gushing rivers of blood flooding the city of my night. Fears and then the intoxicating replay of those first kills. A gentle hand shook me awake, in the nocturnal dimness and quiet sat a tired looking man. He introduced himself as Detective Neoklis Chrtisodoulou, we both stood and then walked to the smoke filled interrogation room. Neoklis was murder police, his job was almost as death orientated as an executioners would be. Strangely through his long distant eyes flowed a world weariness that I could relate to. So I started with the beginning and handed him the case of a lifetime on a plate.

Except that I underestimated this Murder Police's interest. As we chatted, yes chatted, he gave me more insight into his cruel world, Neoklis had at one point been plagued by dreams of the victims, but now after thirty years of it they had become a collage of corpses in his head. He had me banged to rights, hook line and sinker, but we talked instead of motivations, the man proved to be more than a mere beast of the states burden, he had over time progressed through each murder he encountered to see a radically isolated view of our tender species. He laughed and sat backwards in the chair, I was the first revolutionary killer he had encountered, which lead us to talk of ideologies, but as we harmlessly shared our words I realised something. He was as sick of poverty and profit as I was. "Once I solved a case of a woman killed for the 4 dollars in her pocket." His eyes barked to the table then the floor as he spoke. 'It's not the amount that matters but that she like many others

have died because of some kind of necessity to empower the killers, through possession, the state and all those corporations works in the same manner." With the stiffening of my handcuffed fist I realised that I had found a brother, here with my first kill was understanding.

In the distance came the sound of a siren, breaking through the soundproofed interrogation rooms door, it was a guttural roar reaching in pitch and for a moment both of us laughed, as this was an air raid siren, Neoklis stood and indicated I should follow him, as we entered the corridor it was to a fear of chaotic order as officers raced past us with weapons and paraphernalia. I remember smiling as he returned me to the cell.

FATAL PARAPHERNALIA

The little anthropologist glanced nervously in the direction of the three approaching men, the time neared the dawn, birds were singing as they cautiously approached her. She had been hoping for a gentle morning mist or a glorious sunrise, yet once again she remembered that this was 21, in 21 they had banished beauty. So she sized up these approaching men, the shepherd she already knew, but the camouflaged men, their white hats seemed dulled by the setting moon. Cautiously they stopped and looked at the machinery that was scattered haphazardly around them, much of it was recognisable in function to them but lacking the logic of the technology, the men almost became slaves to their own curiosity and confusion, poking at a drop pod or the discarded lids of reconnaissance robots, they finally approached her. Sluggish as all of the inhabitants of 21 are, the men seemed to be a slow motion reflection of life in general, almost worthy of her utter contempt, yet still they were humans, quieter violent reflections of humanity at that, even the smells that came from them were lousy with fears.

She watched the Browning handgun pointing at her as the sergeant spoke, even the unnecessary weapon was a simple extension of that mans fears. Yes looking beyond the anthropologist from the viewpoint of zero, 21 was awash in the terrors of its own peoples, that that fear was often expressed in apathy had resulted in a complete re-write of the science of anthropology. To witness this self fulfilling failure that seemed to start in their schools here, had sent shockwaves through the other realities. In zero every one could make the difference, imagine a world of heroes, who respond universally to an earthquake or tsunami. One person in two is trained as a medico, yet even here in that distant dreamlike reality, those more squeamish of bloods bitter flow, even they could make a difference. Mothers and fathers in Zero moved heaven and Earth to liberate their offsprings mind and lift even the dimmest of children as high as they could. Yet here in 21, what difference could any single person make. None. Her report of the powers that be, sent to zero during her first months here in 21, the logic of this invasion was in the title. Powers that be. The admission that she saw no order or organisation beyond some opportunistic political skullduggery, the illusion of a secure leadership guiding all of these abstract countries through perilous seas, was a lie, a complete fantasy, and it was obvious that no one on 21 had any idea of what they were doing, and more alarmingly they had a system of leadership that guaranteed that only the starkest nastiest most brutal could lead. Fears breeding fears and from Zero's viewpoint that had to stop.

Lurking as I do in all of their minds, I can tell you that at one time the photojournalist from 21, had lived seeing the differences, his atheism had resulted in many a pleasurable argument with the religions and beliefs of others. Even the politics had a similar feel to it for this now destroyed mind, but he hadn't always been that way. As a younger person he had lived in a world of cataclysms and clashes, whether they were Marxists, Socialists, Capitalists or any other kind of revolutionary or

concept driven philosophy, thriving within these sandwiched opposition's he had never wanted his life to be anything else, vive la difference. Yet in these divides that others created he saw something singularly universal, unifying, a common denominator between all of these riptides of human consciousness. Throughout all of it he saw humanity, connective humanity, where the similarities to his mind at least outweighed the differences. In fact all of those frictions had confirmed the humanity of it all, he had seen the futility of racism or of patriotism, on his abstract journey before fundamentalism had evolved and driven his mind to its brinks. His sanity itself dissolved like paracetamol at the weights of extremism, and his brain burst its own banks tidally repulsed by the lack of humanity around him.

As the religions turned their backs on the teachings of their own books, he had fallen in awe at the deniable fact that in a beautiful universe the only ugliness he had seen was humanity. The extremists lacked it. Hated it. All of the fundamentalism whether it was religious or capitalism or communism, whether it was Islam, Christianity, The Dollar bill, land, devastation, petroleum or any of the smaller gods of even smaller egos. All of it was merged into one massive inhuman collage of agonies. As humanity was replaced by the vulgarities of greed, faith, or stasis. Evolution had stopped in the year 2005, that was the year where to be human had been to become a mongrel dog, a dog so desperate to feed and water itself that apathy had overcome the entire species, morality had left the building to be replaced by a toxic immobility of structures that guaranteed famine for many and everything for a few. The knowledge economy, as if knowledge alone could achieve anything without imaginations strength to play with it and apply it, that had twisted his thoughts, the utter unquestioning stupidity of governments and the cowardice of his species became all that he saw. Cowardice. He had railed against his conclusions, longing for the fluffy denials of his youth, longing for that unifying primer that he had seen in it all, and in his madnesses lived a killer. A killer out to show them that one person can and will make a difference.

"When our actions do not our fears can and will make us traitors." He had muttered those lines of Shakespeare on that strange morning when he had decided to take arms against this inhuman sea of liars and oppressors. Alone he had started to work towards the end of them, the end of himself, because in a beautiful universe the ugliest of all is that coward that you see in the mirror as you shave.

All of which would have shocked the little anthropologist acutely, her mindset was completely different, alien in its structures to 21, she saw the same beauty everywhere in the universe and to her eyes it was important that humanity reflected that beauty and generated their own light at it. It would never have occurred to her to kill someone for it, yes there were the occasional murder in zero, but they were affairs of rage and mental illnesses, not a species wide obsession. They left a massive sadness in there wake, not a dismissive nod to a system or culture that inevitably generated them.

The two soldiers stood in front of her, one of them covering her with his Hi Power Browning pistol as the other inexplicably dangled the handcuffs from his hand. She smiled and stumbled to her feet, but that made the men more nervous, so she froze, avoiding contact with their eyes to make herself less threatening. With a savage grip on her wrist, the smaller of the two held her, but suddenly with all of the quality of blurring speed, the mans grip slackened, limply he was placed gently on the ground, she smiled to her husband, and he laughed, whilst the shepherd stood surrounded by the warriors meekly. To be told to head off home. She watched the old man walk with his dog into the distance, and then laughed at the confused expression on the sergeants face as he regained

consciousness.

THE MANIACS APPRENTICE

Would that I could lie here but knowing Neoklis is dead leaves me with little option but to give you the truth of this honourable man, you see he was instrumental in me reaching this point, he saw my toxicity and realised the dangers it posed to the system, a system that this detective despised. In the court room ,much will be made of my considerable skills in escapology, trust me I have met the prosecutor, and she will use every concept she can to win the case against me, seriously I am confident even here that I can bust this crib, given enough time. Yet even though I have escaped from five separate maximum security units, that first one was the easiest. So easy it shouldn't be counted as an escape in my humble opinion. So picture if you will, the complete and total chaos of that first night of the invasion, seriously even the cats and dogs of Limassol were packing their little bags to run away from the ensuing battle. When my cell door mysteriously opened.

You see I hadn't realised that Neoklis had been interviewing me for a different purpose, I just thought he had a charming interrogation technique. So in my assumption it hadn't occurred to me that he was more than an ally in my quest, a quest to rid our world of the parasitic dogs of capitalism, a quest to free us from slavery, and as I was incorrect in thinking at that point, a quest that had been very short lived and of little merit. You see flatteringly, Neoklis saw some kind of hero in me, I will put that down for my preference of using a sword when dispatching these futile gestures of life, but he really did. I remember very cautiously looking through the open cell door, where he was stood holding all of my weapons, he smiled, I will say this for him he was convincing. After my brief nervousness he simply said. "Are you finished with your quest or would you like to kill more of the bastards?" Somehow the depth in his words made me trust him, our partnership was formed during that power cut as we escaped to my new hideout. Which was the last place in Limassol anyone would look, yes his house, in fact his cellar became my new bat cave and from there I planned my next mission.

You see being freed is not the same as escaping, so really it shouldn't be counted in my list of accomplishments, what really does stick in my throat though is the charge that I corrupted an officer. Listen whatever I am guilty of, which is lots and lots, what corrupted Neoklis was a corrupted poverty stricken system, a system that rewarded crime over honesty, and a system that guaranteed human misery in its blindness, or as he said to on one occasion. "Yeah, I know justice is blind, but does she have to be deaf and dumb as well?" It was in Limassol that the first offensive began, from my hide I watched as the men of camouflage read their maps, the British soldiers vibrantly mobilised to meet this as yet unknown threat, head on.

THE FIRST OFFENSIVE

It started quickly, the invaders themselves had been quietly biding their time and energies in the hills, whilst I as is my viral habit, explored this particularly strange mindscape that is 21. As is often the case with battles it is ridiculous to look for a logic, as the whole thing is far to arbitrary to calculate, yet the first skirmish started accidentally in a Cypriot village, when a small boy was hurt in a collision with a tractor. Being unable to call an ambulance, the shepherd found himself running back up the hill to the strangers there, edgily he shuffled his feet as he explained the situation to these strange shrieking hoplites of legend, he was surprised when one squealed at another and then three of them raced away to village, at such speeds that from the shepherds perspective they were a

blur. By some curious cosmic quirk, the red cross symbol on the shoulders was a shared logo between zero and 21, it meant the same thing, before the shepherd could return to the village he was offered some more food and sat drinking coffee with the leader of them, whilst stumbling through his many questions the shepherd asked if he was a brother of the maniac that had been arrested in his living room, to which the other version of the same man just laughed.

In the small hillside village, people stopped as the three almost miraculously appeared, women marvelled a these Spartan apparitions, that with a god like clarity went to work healing the damaged little boy. One of them a woman stood guard, as the man scanned the child, his mother let out a small choke of despair when she saw the holographic image of the child's hip, the man struggled his helmet off, and then she felt the pressure of his grip on her shoulders, without words he smiled to her, it calmed the terrified parent immediately, then almost like some magic trick he began to manipulate the bones, whilst the other bathed the child's head in a warm hypnotic blue light, the crowd of concerned onlookers watched as bone snapped and fused back into position, until finally the boy groaned and smiled through the pain to his mother. After frightening minutes the man stopped, then operated a clockwork winder and spoke to her through the box. "He should take it easy for a couple of days and eat one of these bars twice a day in case of infection, but he will be fine." Being Cypriot she had to get her grandmother to translate for her, but then she hugged the stranger thanking him in as many languages as she could think of. Much to the surprise of the strangers they were invited to an impromptu street party, as the village celebrated the salvation of the child. Both men looked to the silent women, who simply nodded curtly then with a shrill dolphin like laugh they sat on the road chatting with the locals.

Before long word got around and then ailment after family ailment was repaired, to the medics of Zero, the populace seemed almost malnourished, and at some points the men genuinely were struggling with illnesses that had been wiped out back in their home reality hundreds of years ago. One particularly blind and arthritic old girl of 93 years of age, confused the men completely, as the problems they encountered were almost archeological, neither had never dealt with cataracts before but after a consultation with myself and the portable data base they were able to tackle the problem, after the aged lady had the immune boosters she more or less tap danced in the crowd laughing as if a miracle had been performed. This is how the fist skirmish in the reality wars started, because of the unparalleled naivety of the medics from Zero. From my unique perspective I am unsure if it was the blatant bribery of free healthcare that lead to a small recon units rather ill advised attack, or the paranoias of the Cypriot or British governments. You see the scenario went like this.

Early in the morning the British prime minister was awakened by a rather irritated Cypriot minister, demanding to know why British special forces had taken a rather irrelevant hill top at three in the morning, which also coincided with the viscous murder of a texan oil mogul in his own home, coincidentally murdered by a British citizen. The British prime minister contacted his generals who took action on both counts but she also spoke to the American president. Who informed her that the assassin was a Lebanese resident, well that involved the Israelis somehow, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me as a visitor from Zero, but apparently it did. Then quicker than you could say Osama Bin Laden, the generals started to see terrorists under their beds. All of them looking like Steve Merrick the assassin. Confusing I know but then came the reports that the murderer had been caught and some kind of invasion was going on. After some thoughts at a place called the Pentagon, the British were informed quite definitely that this was an Iranian invasion, confused yet, I am, but heck at least I am not human.

All of which came as a massive surprise to the section of the Special Air Service that had been staking out that particular village. Imagine how they leapt like tigers at their prey, growling with venomous spittle, the toughest soldiers of 21 were about to engage two unarmed medics and a field anthropologist, to save the egos of the SAS, the anthropologist was armed, unluckily for them she was from 3, which is the most professional military in the multiverse. It was as the four men crept through the darkening street that things went wrong for their short lived moment of glory. The now hipster spinster grandmother of seven, cured of all of her ailments was drunker than Blue Beard the pirate was when he had engaged in his final fatal shootout. Now the military have these things called rules of engagement, in 21 they were more a guideline, upon seeing the four balaclava clad commandos, grannie felt like a dance, and found herself being sworn at, which even for a toothless old hag is a bit much, so she being a proud Cypriot woman, kicked the leading soldier quite painfully where it counted. Having raised the alarm, the anthropologist swung into action rapidly putting down so much electro magnetic fire that two of the soldiers were downed in the first exchange of shots. One of the medics then appeared behind the sergeant in charge and using an anaesthetic syringe at high speed knocked the man out painlessly. All of which resulted in Trooper Higgs throwing his hands in the air and mewing like a kitten when he was caught.

Trooper Higgs was in a mild state of shock as he was dragged to the Anthropologist, his eyes spoke of terror as he looked to his immobilised colleagues, the anthropologist seemed quite fierce as well as she was kicking the men awake. Finally the other medic looked him over and then offered him some vitamin tablets. "Take these for your friends when they come to." Higgs stuttered and tried to smile through his terror. ""Its a knock out amnesia gun mate, we are not psychotic." The medic said looking confusedly at the terrified prisoner. Yes its true and here I have to hand it to Zero's Harmless Firearms Industry inc. The Knock out amnesia gun is one of their finer designs, intended for the police force in Zero to use, when one of the rare psychotic criminals needed apprehending. It works by giving the brain an intense electro magnetic jolt, the when aimed at the frontal lobe, causes brief nausea followed by unconsciousness, the other advantage when dealing with psychotics is that it causes temporary amnesia, which is why the three zapped soldiers were under the impression that they were still in a place called Hereford, in the island of Britain.

Now their confusion to find themselves in a Cypriot village was mildly amusing and sensing that the unzapped man was being stressed by this experience, the anthropologist zapped him, humanely, and the four of them were lead disarmed to the path that would take them home. At the bottom of the valley the men met a general, and she wasn't happy about their complete defeat at the hands of these interlopers, unluckily the general was unaware of the facts as she was convinced that the Iranians were up to something, so after meeting the returnees, she contacted London, who contacted Washington who then relayed their attack orders back to her. So when the man on the chessboard gets up and tells you what to do, the general decided to launch a two pronged attack. All of this was happening as Steve was escaping to Nioklis's small flat, so as Typhoon fighter jets took off and tanks rolled, he was being fed and introduced to a sheepdog call Cnute. Confusing as these chain of events may be the RAF was thoroughly defeated as pilot after pilot was forced to eject, whilst at ground level things didn't fare much better.

Think about the weapons for a moment, in 21 they were all devastating, Newtonian physics and friction played a role and against what was Zero's amnesia weapons. I shall tell you the fusileers tale as an example of that now infamous night. The 2nd Company of the 387th fusileers bravely and with a cool professionality went into action, where they encountered the enemies artillery, dropping for cover as the shells rushed at them, the entire unit awoke in some cases worrying about the

exams they had to take in the morning. During the first night of fighting there was only one fatality, when a land rover accidentally ran over the very drunken Cypriot grandmother. Yet facing the loss of her entire force the general withdrew her soldiery. Then the enemy assaulted her forward command HQ and that managed to cause a route, as the General was under the impression she had to be at a fancy dress party in a place called Kilburn, also in the island of Britain. All of which resulted in total human chaos in Limasol.

THE MANIACS ESCAPE

Hair dye is a marvellous thing, so a brunette me stood in line with the myriad of other refugees, waiting for the boats to take us away. I was fortunate, as I had chosen to go to Beirut, the others were all running for Greece or mainland Europe. I was glad that I had the foresight to put 25 dollars in the false passport. That was Nioklis's handy work though, And whoever had stolen Anton Mullers ID, had been caught at it, yet the pass had strangely not been listed in any police documents. I had several new identities now, all of them clipped from police evidence, with a changed face, I held the pass and smiled to the over run official. German, dark hair, with blue eyes, contrary to the spy books, I hadn't chosen to ever wear contacts. I shot a few frames as I entered the ferry, it was a chaos of heads and people, one child on her fathers shoulders stood out.

After a while the ferry began its journey, even in the pressing emergency of an alien invasion, it was only two thirds full. I sat on deck watching the sea roll relentlessly past me, it was surprise to be stripped of journalism, her whip had been lashing my back my whole life, yet suddenly, I felt the absence of my press card, Steve Merrick, it was core to my identity, and armed as I was with only one digital camera, it felt strange. Taking on a new personality is a difficult thing, I would be the first to admit that my own individuality had lead me to this point in my life. Yet for all of that, journalism had been the path I walked, and here on this ferry, I realised how far from that path I was now treading. My course had been altered, with my identity known to the authorities, I could never again be Steve Merrick, nor could I hide behind that moral security blanket of news gatherer. In fact much like our alien visitors, I had stepped into a parallel universe, the face and the mind were the same. I calm when I am near water, and as I sat watching the Mediterranean, I thought of my actions. Actions that you may not yet understand, but maybe I should tell you of them, if only there was another writer here. I could and should explain all of this, or maybe just shrug, and blame it all on capitalism and Bosnia.

THE OTHER WRITER

Lucidity is a strange gift, isn't it, as a virus I see it for what it is, as a human you would argue about that truism. Your argument would add up to so much cause and effect to me. Its one of those oddities of human behaviour, justification, morality, good and bad, before he went quite mad, Steve would have said of conscience. "Well you have Darth Vader on one shoulder, and Obi Wan Kenobe on the other." Neither can alter the balance of it, without external help. What would change conscience, into actions that can shock, is that external pressure. Yet without forces a person wouldn't be that worried by it all. So ask yourself, how does a hippy photographer, turn into one of the deadlier assassins of the super rich. He is destined to kill 128 of them, even the world wars didn't claim as many of the wealthier as he will, I could let the story unravel on its own, but maybe I should tell you a part of our heroes story, I at least see him as a hero.

Imagine a world where nobody ever justified killing anyone else. It was done, why moralise, the

child that survived that warfare develops an odd morality, and in the case of your hero on these pages, it was in that cauldron of warfare that he formed. Would it shock you that this sword wielding maniac, was actually a gentle child, in many ways an even gentler man. Too gentle. For all of the violence he had covered, he hasn't expressed his lot violently until recently. What is the survival advantage of gentility, as a virus I am uncertain, the loss of sanity though, that much makes sense to me. I can see the advantage and also, applaud his goals and choice of method. Killing these human absurdities with a sword. Its irony wasn't lost on him either. After years of shooting pictures he could've out shot some of zero's lesser marksmen. He could've simply retreated to his own inner world.

It is in this confused harmony that one of the finest of killers was born. Capitalisms one true achievement was in destroying his mind, to the point where he became a whole entity, an island. Oh he had photographed the world of wars, sat at countless crime scenes and shot his frames. All of it had notched up a score chart of terror in his minds eye. You have to question the insanity though. In a world where people were powerless to change anything, he shines as an example of. "Fuck it!" Surrounded by impotent fools chasing their own dollars, he stood silently. He was always a tree hugger, an environmentalist, but when he realised that this truly would be game over, unless we reacted sanely, well then he thought one simple thought. "Kill em."

The simplicity of shooting his horses if they had failed the jumps, well it was what it was. I don't think he expected it to cause much of a change, yet he did make a greater wave than the aliens did. It happened suddenly in a refugee camp, he was stunned to be there again, after years the camp itself hadn't changed much, but even with the influx of Syrian refugees, even with the brand change in the nature of the warfare, he saw the same site he had seen twenty years previously, unchanged. It was as he thought, "Human evolution zero." That he started to drift, seriously just drift. One day later he had left the place and on the other side of the world seen a young and healthy Grey whale die, stranded on a beach. Following this story, he had watched the autopsy, photographed it as the plastic bags, and rubbish were pulled from within the whale. To Steve the whale had been lost in our useless waste, utterly corrupted by his own species stupidity. Later that day he read a report on air quality. 8 million of your species die as a result of poor air quality every year.

For a child raised by the pacific, this was all to much, the lack of any strategic response from governments, or corporations, left him cold. The moment he snapped was subtle, back in lebanon, on the border, he watched a child, missing a limb, stumble on the rocky ground. No one anywhere came to the child's aid. He stopped taking pictures there, and picking the child up onto his shoulders, he walked her into the camps clinic. Witnessing tired doctors, looking through the infant was understandable, picking her up had felt good. Looking around him he knew that killing Assad would make no difference, or the Jihadist's, lost in the security of their god hypothesis's latest translation. No you could kill them and it would have no impact. Besides Steve didn't understand the logic of sending a psychopath to paradise. No, but he did understand the economics of pollution, and the fears that the power hungry and greedy had. The girl smiled to him, he smiled back to her, calmness descended on him in that clinic. Looking into the little girls eyes he spoke gently. "I am going to kill as many of them as I can kid." The child didn't understand English but she smiled back.

The tired Doctor spoke to him, stood smoking outside of the tent. The dry and barren landscape was broken by the shear number of the tents. Steve had been lost in his MP3 player for years. The violence was nothing new to him, it was all so many stopped heartbeats on one level, but to watch

an entire species choose a slow motion suicide over life, that was to much. It was a like the landscape a barren awakening. Sitting together sharing the headphones, Steve was shocked when the doctor elevated himself from exhaustion and with his feet tapping, hummed to Nina Simone Sinner Man. "Oh sinner man where you gonna run." With his mind working like a concussion grenade, Steve absorbed the lyrics, and lost in the intricate absurdities of misery and profits, he formed a plan, sat there he replayed the thought processes, and prepared himself for the bloody work that would be at hand. Yes in a quiet moment in a Lebanese refugee camp, a killer came slowly to life, planning his assault, with meticulous laughter and mirth.

So having escaped Cyprus, he stepped rapidly through the dusty Lebanese streets, stopping only to appreciate the bats, and then checking through his weapons cache he prepared to assault the nearby Greek islands, starting in the corporate conference, a conference that would be carving up the minerals and aggregates of the nouveaux war on terrors gains, and at a conference like that a journalist would always be kept at arms length, but before he left he had found the arms dealer, his second official kill. It happened like this, Albert was from a French aristocratic family, and having decided on the profitability of the arms trade, he had set up shop in the hazy and Christian half of the city of Beirut, the Eastern half of that once war ravaged city. With its freshly built palaces of commerce, the reconstruction of the city had dealt a blow to the bloodstained architecture of blasted concrete and brick. Albert always did like the amoral photographer, he genuinely thought was a friend, Steve was in no way being deceptive, needing Alberts connections for his stories, and besides, a few weeks before if you had asked him about the arms industry, well it was written in his own diary, just one sentence.

Take the middlemen of the weapons world away, and people will just regress to throwing rocks at each other, then strangling or battering each other with sticks, the fact that there is a marketplace for weapons tells you more about our species than all of the art on the planet can.

Later in captivity, during his political prisoner phase, Steve will write this following pointer.

The middlemen are the real criminals of the whole piece, they cajole and reaffirm the needs of their customers, creating artificial solutions to the problems that they themselves created, if you look at it, we had enough decent firearms after the 2nd world war, but in a fit of geopolitical engineering, the industry actually got more excessive, and created too many newer variations on a theme. The eloquent simplicity of a British wartime Sten gun was overtaken by the complexity of an MP5 or the brute force of the Uzi. The same evolution happened with tanks, ships, communications, air planes and bullet proof vests, whilst post war medicine stood still, chained by the profits and loss of heath care. To fight wars that really didn't need to be fought, whilst the middle men kept pushing their wares, which inevitably escalated the small wars, and created small pools of misery, for those unfortunate enough to be living in countries that were the subject of military experimentations. Fuelled by the ever loving middle men, men who were only fulfilled by their need for profits. You can see that the excesses of the one percent who dominated our world, came from the zeal of the mercenary middle men, and they reconfirmed not only the need for the one percent to exist, but also the need for violence and better weapons. Put mildly, I would rather kill a middleman or a one percenter with a Sten gun. At the end of the day, the middle men created the enemies, and the need. Whereas in reality the real enemy was poverty, and the many oppressions that strangled free thought, this was the true face of the hedge funders and capitalism. If you meet a corporate front man, just kill them.

You can see the difference in the words, one was short and to the point, whilst also being ambiguously vague. Whilst the older wiser and insane Steve, loftily paints a perilous interpretation to this picture. Warfare is one of the few human institutions that is always questioned, whilst nothing has ever been done about it. In Crazy Steve's mind he was not waging a war against the one percent, he was simply exterminating a problem, like so many cockroaches they fell. So Albert sat in his office, secure in his faith that Steve was his mate, so secure he had sent his security men to lunch, and Steve smiled to Albert, and asked him for his contact book whilst he showed him the Greek leaf sword. Albert held it, as Steve stirred the sugar into his coffee. "Ahh those were the days when it would have been good to be a man, mon ami non?" Albert said as he pulled his contact book from the draw and playfully thrust the sword in the air.

"You are holding it wrong Albert, let me show you." Steve said smiling as he slipped behind Albert and gripped over the mans soft hands. Steve was rarely cruel, Albert would not have seen the smaller blade of the dagger, the large man would not have felt the razor sharp incision at the back of his neck, then as his eyes silently glazed over, Steve settled him in his chair, and took the contact book, he now had access to every weapons dealer in the Western world, and many in the east, even half of the African subcontinent, stepping slowly from the office, he gazed through the streets, without much of a reaction to this second kill. Whilst looking up Alberts Greek contacts. Two hours later he was sat on a flight to Athens.

ATHENIAN MARBLES AND THE CLOTTING BLOOD OF OPPORTUNISTIC FREELOADERS.

If you can handle the air quality, Athens is a bustling vigorous little metropolis and well worth the visit, but the locals haven't taken to the internal combustion engine in a minor way, nobody it seems walks, seriously I wouldn't be surprised if an eight year old can legally drive here. The air quality is mirrored by some bloody poor controls of the nations industrial and power generating output, and all that adds up to it being a chain smokers paradise. I smiled inwardly on that morning, because I knew that a part of what I was doing today was going a long way to punishing those responsible for the air issues. Four of Forbes top hedge funders were going to be present at this hugely important business political meeting, and already, the deniers of global warming were loudly proclaiming there faiths about it being a hoax. One of them was stood in front of my camera, as I stood in a small crowd of visual press types, dismally small of heart and free of thought, the man proceeded with his monologue, almost putting me into a soporific sleep, sadly I couldn't just cap him where he was standing, as that would bugger the entire plan, besides which, I am a proponent of action and free speech, so even if he had been brought and sold to the industrial complex, he was only exercising his freedoms. There is always morality in my murder, even when it comes to deceptive liars like this guy. Which is why its time to write about Athens.

You see my guards have just walked me back to my cell, they are friendly, but thoroughly alert, one of them admires my "Work." The other thinks I am a deranged criminal pig, which is more freedom of speech really isn't it. I have been seeing a shrink here in the run up to the trial, she is not brought or sold, just there to figure out if I am insane enough for legal proceedings, or if I am totally insaner and oblivious of the problems my crimes have caused. Who could've thought that simply murdering 128 of the one percent, could cause another financial meltdown, plus I found out from her that copy cats have taken it upon themselves to finish my works. She even showed me of a video of some bomb vested Martyr taking out the Saudi Stock exchange, ironically his last words were, "Freedom." If there is freedom in suicide, then I may have not gotten that memo, but others have

joined me, I have become some abstract movement, just like Al Quada did, so now everyone with an axe to grind is probably sharpening it, and it may be my head on the block, seriously if I was being tried in the US of A it would be a firing squad, but such is the way of law and order, here I will be locked up. My shrink was prompting me to talk of Athens today though, I smiled and told her she had a best selling book in her, but here maybe I should tell you how it went down, and how my count of the super rich hit 38, on that sunny evening.

Conferences everywhere are dull, and stimulating, just rarely at the same time, so as I watched this one grow, I saw the servers dropping plates and rushing their Michelin menus to the clients, the meeting was under the control of one of the worlds to hedge funding takers, and he was excessively displaying his wealth with the lavish surroundings and foods. The press bar was an open one, and many of my more seasoned colleagues were taking full advantage of that fact, I was sipping at a freshly squeezed orange juice, but some how managed to spill whisky all over myself. Impersonating a drunken journalist is not difficult, so I found myself in the executive toilet, giggling. 21 people were destined to end their existence in that luxurious latrine. I know so because I kept count of them. A 7 star toilet, is actually larger than most peoples living rooms are, and in the communal space I staggered jovially in my James Bond Dinner Jacket, but by the time I was finished that spacious potty cubicle would give a forensic scientist nightmares. It was not an art form, just a literal bloodbath ahead.

THE TIOLET FROM HELL.

"It's like Silent Hill in there." Those were the words of an Interpol detective in the hastily convened press conference following Steve's first true bloodbath. To this day nobody is to sure how the vorpalised journalist, got a sword, a Sub Machine gun, a Silenced pistol, 12 hand grenades and 4 slabs of C4 plastique past the extremely tightened security. It was quite easy, the arms drop off, where Steve Paid for the weaponry was in the hotel itself, and using a visiting French Dignitaries pass, well no questions were asked. Yet what of the mad mans mind as he struck at them all, what maths of sanity was he using as he killed them all, and he had taken to killing them as duck takes to water. Looking at the man in his cell, he regrets missing one of the Koch Brothers, and the Nestle CEO, who felt access to fresh water was not a human right, if you ask the prisoner, he will tell you of the two that got away, but on that sunny afternoon, the madman embraced his mission, and with a spiteful malice, he slaughtered these people who besieged others with their wealth. His mind was not at all turbulent, there was no state of grace to be found in the act of killing, just necessity, but where was his mind as these events unravelled forwards.

KILL HEAD

Slipping from my pretend drunk rigmarole awakened my senses in an intoxicating way, the first walked nonchalantly into the toilets, two of them, talking, conversing, about, mineral deposits. "On the one hand the field will inevitably play out but on the other, if we are there at the start, then the trick is working out when to jump ship, plus since we are too big to fail, we can always find a sucker to take the plunge for us." Engrossed in the futures of their stocks, neither noticed the pistol, until it was to late, then they saw it fully, eyes bulged as the silencer hissed its single projectile into the first ones head, then the dum dum bullet shattered shredding what passed for grey matter in this charlatans skull. The slimmer second man stared at me briefly, thoughts formed lost across his brow, but I pointed him into the luxurious toilet, bigger than my own bedroom is, and in the dimming candle light, fired into the back of his head. The CZ in 380 calibre creates less mess, so

dragging the other body into the room was simplicity itself, it was as I closed the door that I saw the old man, African, wearing white chef style clothing, he looked at me hopelessly, as I stepped forwards. If a servant is no threat then they have nothing to fear from me, so I smiled and using gaffer tape tied him up in a cubicle, after I had liberated his jacket.

Wallets can tell you a lot about a person, these were slim, virtually empty, but within both were a few hundred dollar bills, chump change to these capitalists when they were alive, but I returned to the servant and placed the money into his sock, tucked against his ankle, I smiled then, feeling relaxed that the game was starting, and told him he would be fine. Then returned to the entry room, checking my reflection in the mirror, from journalist to assassin, to assassin toilet attendant. It couldn't have worked out better, as covers go, who pays attention to the toilet cleaners, nobody does. So anonymously I waited for the next one. Like a strange athlete he entered, without a thought or word, he clicked a finger and I approached him, then as I took his jacket, he stepped into the cubicle with the two dead men in it, he may have wanted to speak, but he never got the chance, falling soundlessly dead, whilst I was in awe of the dum dum bullets completely. Strangely it became a production line of sorts after that, twenty three of them were shuffling off their mortal coils, without any hitch to me, and it was here that the more difficult part of the days work lay ahead of me. So slipping back into my clothes I left the toilet, and made my way to the main auditorium, where the conference was taking place.

Concealing a Beretta Model 12 is easy, but keeping the spare magazines of ammunition handy whilst concealed is impossible. The vanishing dignitaries, were oddly going unnoticed, which gave me a feverish nervousness, as I wondered when the whistle would go up. Charge one was placed under the podium, along with me taking several shots of the speaker, two was a distraction charge, by the windows, but four, would blow the stairwell, leaving the lift covered by a command detonating slab. Having mixed the C4 with smaller amounts of Cemtex, the bangs would be loud and devastating in themselves. As a break was called the business types all headed for the restaurants, and I waited for the first boom, my stomach muscles tightened, I stepped down onto my knees, placing my hands over my ears, whilst deliberately keeping my mouth open, and then the pressure waves from the blast had an almost dislocated reality to them.

Stunned but ready, I pulled the stock back and advanced on the hedge funders, five in a row in front of me, my hearing heard the song fly me to the moon, the woman who sang it, has a groovy lilt in her voice, but I opened fire. Brap! Brap! Brap! Three of them tumble like grotesque manikins they just fell, the remaining two started to run. I fired breaking the fourths back, but took aim at the fifth, and watched as he blindly ran out of the shattered window, I think I chuckled at his accident, but twelve floors are twelve floors, so I turned to finish the fourth, but spotted the Nestle CEO and fired towards him, cursing the twenty round clip as the gun went click, in that hollow way that all empty guns do, dropping the magazine catch, I grabbed one of the spares taped inconveniently under my shirt, slipping it into the mechanism, I watched as the exec ran stealthily away whilst I was pulling the bolt back, almost as if in slow motion, I watched the spring push forwards, glimpsing the brass of the bullet as it was chambered, but by then the man had gone.

Fill my heart with song and let me sing forever more, she sang, conjuring up the image of the sixties mini skirts, but I proceeded to chase down as many of them as I could. The man from a medical corporation twisted as he fell, I remember his eyes looking at me with shock, anger, and a confusing sadness, yet the shell fortunately struck his skull silencing his expressions, I rolled a grenade into the centre of the room and slamming a fresh clip in waited for it to flush out those cowering under

the conference tables. It did better as a huge man was airborne, splashing a spray of red around him as he was dropped by gravity screaming to the ground, as a dazed security type pulled his weapon to fire as my figure silhouetted itself framed against the window. I aimed low and blew out the back of his knee cap with a quick two sot burst of lightened fire, looking away to my left I saw the hedge founder himself crawling with sobbing breath, I fired into the back of his head at twenty feet and missed severing his spine and lungs instead, so he got a second burst and his vocalisations and rasping sobs stopped. It was time to split, so I ran for the rear staircase, and as I took the hallway found a clutch of banking type hiding in a closet, one was looking through a crack in the door, I saw a single eye widen as I with an unexpected casual motion threw the tiny hand grenade into the closet and continue away from the dull pop of the explosion. Two of the men in that closet survived, one has since written a book about it and his recovery, which is what it is in this day and age.

Tossing my weapons and dropping the two remaining grenades down the staircase I descended the chaos and almost laughably was rescued by the Greek police. Then with even more ease than I had expected, and I hadn't expected to escape at all, I was running with all the other people fleeing the scene, and later I found myself hiding in the small flat several miles away. In Hollywood movies the assassin tends to walk away from the scene of the crime casually, seriously who in their right minds walks casually from something like that, nope you run with the rest of the herd, in fact I ran like a bastard, trying to escape myself maybe, but I just ran....

THE IRANIAN DENIAL

The little anthropologist from Zero, was sat watching the suns muted light set through what she knew the locals would have called a brooding cloudscape, to her eyes it wasn't anything but muted, in Zero the storms hit faster, the forces are unchained by the gravity of this inter dimensional physics, as rather friendly raindrops began to spatter on the ground and her skin she laughed, to your ears it would have sounded like a cat or a shrieking fox in the night, yet the woman does have a beautiful laugh, even a virus like me can embrace laughter, and hers if you slowed it down was beautiful and bell like in it's intonations. Her name is Jeanette, and she is married to the Steve from Zero, she loves a problematic man, and he was definitely brooding and in danger of a grumpiness mood swing that here would be considered some kind of apocalyptic mental illness. She had watched him talking with the UN negotiators, his initial confusion that they only spoke to him in Farsi was from Zero's perspective understandable. Finally he had demanded they spoke in English, which surprised the men and women of the UN. They informed him of impending sanctions, and his laughter had shrilled through the clearing.

So he gave them a formula for a self replicating protein that ate carbon, converting it into small pellets, explaining that if they released this into the atmosphere it would replicate and reduce carbon levels everywhere to pre fossil fuel levels where by releasing a second protein it would be switched off. Solving the climactic troubles that the planet was having. The confused officials listened as he explained the danger of the protein, and then gave them in clear english a written explanation for the layman and a more in depth explanation for their chemists to dissect. He then spoke to Jeanette and she rather abstractly handed them a cure for cancer and several virus's. To this the officials gave them a two day deadline to leave Cyprus and return to Iran. He explained that people's from 7 different dimensions had come to help the lost inhabitants of this reality 21, one of the women was a financial specialist, and she spoke briefly of the rewards of good behaviour over the reality of sanctions, and he had then explained that they knew nothing of this economic fantasy, nor had they any use for money, money that he pointed out was made from wood pulp and that he had a lot of

uses for trees but not for bits of paper. She had gone icicle like to him at that point and he had given her plans for a universal power supply, and also handed her the methodology of cold fusion, explaining that 3 had figured that one out, whilst on zero they used wind and sunlight for their power requirements.

So having been handed the keys to the universe the negotiators left, talking of further sanctions and actions to come. Realising that this had created an unfathomable impasse he had desperately tried to explain that they were not from Iran, in zero that whole of the middle east was known as Babylon, a place for astronomy and science, yet the woman had scowled at him, with fierceness that even though muted was quantifiable in their minds eyes and she had muttered about fundamental whack jobs and left. Which left him brooding and moody as he sat explosively with Jeanette, who at least had been living amongst these savages on and off for two years. She tried to calm him but could see the exasperated question mark replaying like a looped CD in his mind, seriously Zero Steve didn't get it, he saw solutions to all their problems but no one had even acknowledged them at that strange meeting. So in an effort to quell his confusion before the banks of his anterior lobes flooded and his amygdala was swamped permanently she passionately paid attentions to her lover, and for at least twenty minutes he forgot the stupidity of the people's of 21. One of the most productive and emotive of minds from Zero was perplexed and confused by 21's planet wide nervous breakdown, he was a trouble shooter of thought and unlike Steve the psychotic of 21, he had never been chained by capitalisms tender embrace. Instead he had been nurtured and embraced, it was here that the enlightened Steve would have benefitted from talking with psycho Steve, but such thoughts had tumbled like the flower that had fallen from her hair the first time they had loved many years ago, and with the rising tide of love and lust Zero Steve lost everything inside her, lost in that timelessness of sex and trust.

As the two lay together feeling the blades of grass caressing their skins it was then that 21 sent its reply, as the missiles flew towards the glade that the armed enemies had occupied. Springing to their feet as the alarm was raised, the pair raced towards the shielded area on the top of the hill.

FUNDAMENTAL WHACK JOBS

ISIS commanders were racing across the Syrian desert, as something was brewing in Aleppo, psycho Steve had struck with a deadly precision killing the Saudi backer with one shot, and then taken apart the four bodyguards and the seventeen representatives of freedom that the jihad had sent to meet him. At the very same time people claiming to represent the British empire had liberated half of their front excluding Aleppo and had simultaneously deposed Assad and his set of cronies creating a safe zone for the battered people's of Syria. Putting the empire aside the atheist bastard Merrick had to be dealt with, a lesson had to be sent to the world, Saeed took off with a small force to deal with him in Aleppo, whilst the overall regional commander took a larger force to deal with this empire craziness. Saeed had faith in his god, and knew they would be righteous, so as the twenty men stalked into Aleppo they caught psycho Steve in a cafe. In a now legendary shoot out, the denim clad journalist released hell at his opponents, and as he pointed out at his trial, how come no-one has a problem about me killing them? Yet to make sense of it all I will focus down on these two very different battles, starting with Steve's epic shoot out at the Arafat cafe.

First off even when imprisoned Steve somehow had an ability to find decent coffee, it's a common denominator of his adult life, and sadly at the Arafat cafe he had just had an embittering experience, the psychiatrist was surprised at his take on the shoot out, and his description of the coffee, which

had all the charms of the three witches and had probably been mixed in a cauldron along with human feet and frogs legs. In the Arafats cafes defence there was a major war going on and coffee was not a necessary product for survival, so this had put Steve in a very darkened mood before Saeed arrived. Yet as he dissected the only cup of joe for about forty miles Steve watched as the shadowy figures began to surround the cafe, he even chuckled with relief as he realised they were an ISIS commando unit, armed as he was with two Ruger Blackhawks cowboy revolvers, both in 357 magnum calibre and one with a four inch barrel and the other with a six inch barrel, complete with the cowboy holster he kicked the table over and lobbed a grenade into their general direction. Notably it was the same guns that he was later arrested with and they are a personal favourite of our psychotic hero. The grenade exploded near a bunch of gas canisters and fire licked through five of the attackers who with flailing arms ran and fell chaotically in the narrow street, Saeed hit the floor with singed eyebrows and cursing in Arabic he opened fire with his captured M4 carbine, bullets splashed ineffectively about the tables and chairs of the front of the cafe and he watched as the Mouharreb rat Steve disappeared into the cafe itself. The smells of gas and burning flesh filled the air and five of his warriors rushed the door, flashes erupted from the windows as they fired.

Yet steve had left through the rear entrance, thinking he was running Saeed ordered them to give chase, as they ran into the cafe shots were fired into the backs of the men, and he looked at this apparitions silhouette firing with two cowboy guns into his men's back he also felt their blood impact his face, turning to face the danger the remaining 12 men fired spraying speeding and spinning hot metals everywhere that was in shadows, in a classic example of fire and movement

Steve had fired and raced behind the cafe again, he was almost casually reloading the bulky revolvers, then with a smile he attacked form behind again, a hand grenade fell tumbling slowly through the window as Saeed rolled desperately away from it, the blast shot vicious and sharpened shrapnel through his lungs and something echoed through his thoughts, regret, he wasn't ready to leave the world yet, and gasping for breath he stumbled surrealistically for the Toyota truck they had arrived in, deafened he couldn't hear the merciless carnage behind him as his concussed and confused brothers were slaughtered, finally he reached the truck, but couldn't get the door to open, slowly behind him Steve walked ejecting shells from the guns, even though they were slow to load they would never jam and considering this first use of them, they had proven alarmingly accurate.

Saeed slipped down with his back against the truck, a slick of blood trailed where he had been, and he reached for his pistol but a trainer from the foot of the man above him was slammed brutally down on his arm, Saeed didn't hear his words but should have been glad that the killer was rarely cruel, dispatching his victims with a ruthless efficiency yes, but rarely with pain or unnecessary stresses attached, and the shadowed silhouette that fired the shot into his head looked like some demonic apparition to the religious minds eye that Saeed possessed. He thought of the people he had done the same to, that woman he had raped for a week or two before killing her, there had been something gentle in her eyes, yet here his killer had no eyes, just shadows, just blackness, and he struggled to speak to say stop, I'm sorry, I don't want to go, but the shot that killed him he never even felt nor did he hear the mans words through his deafened concussed ears. "Now Brother you are irrelevant."

Across the desert a less fatal picture was forming, and a new state, a state where people could finally breath out after the perpetual years of rolling warfare came slowly to an end. The Jeanette from 3 was a true Boudicca, a warrior princess of her people, yet not many had died, the men had been captured with a breathless ease, and their tanks and rockets had failed to fire, the electronics had stopped locally. Being extremist by nature the jihadists found themselves blank, they could remember their names and their language but could not fathom why they were there, or how the

weapons they were holding worked, having had their hippocampus network scrambled many panicked and ran to their attackers for help. In the space of two days the Caliphate was plunged into non existence, and the government forces did not fare much better, in Damascus Assad was sitting playing with Lego bricks after the assault by 3's shock force, there were in total 103 fatalities, including two women from the recon force of 3, in that city the assault stopped, suddenly the invaders were handing out masses of food, they even had a technique for creating water from fresh air, but they also separated the people's, creating 3 new states where those of the two different faith could live separately or together by choice. Which managed to anger the rest of the world, Russia proclaimed Assad was a victim, whilst ISIS were being callously attacked according to the right wing in the American congress, Pope Francis retained a marginal degree so sanity when he sent an envoy to talk to the invaders as the dimension hopping forces had become known. Meanwhile scientists were dissecting the cures they had given, cancer would be gone, the protein mixture could reduce the emissions, whilst the cold fusions process worked, yet one by one these potential salvations became sensitive secrets, and with every visit the ambassadors came back with more. Including a flexible house that could expand and contract to the needs of its users, every step of the way the industrialised world buckled seeking solutions that were profitable, they created obscure arguments against the newer alien technologies that scientists were only beginning to comprehend.

The mighty Cock brothers fused economic and moralistic arguments into one thing, creating the terrifying spectre of a financial meltdown alongside a social collapse, in an effort to perpetuate their profits, they proceeded to prove that the invaders were responsible for Global warming, not them, not human emissions but cat like screeching creatures from neighbouring universes, playing upon the paranoias that prevail in the mindsets of 21, their argument gained solidity in the hearts of the powerful, whilst the people's knew nothing of the invaders beyond the three states and a small part of Cyprus, here journalists were silenced, many had made what they expected to be a perilous journey but discovered opposite, one arrived in her flak vest, she knew psycho Steve very well, and was surprised when she met the doppelgänger, in fact she pounced quietly upon the Steve from Zero, thinking he was undercover, she smiled and there said. "So you bumped off the capitalists to get the scoop, Jesus Steve your a true professional?"

The man looked at her blankly, then put the pieces together with his insane double. He smiled and took her to the command centre, here she met two more Steve's. Putting aside her initial theorisations about cloning, the four of them sat next to a large map, and she started to question them, all of her questions amounted to the same thing though. "What do you want?" The three of them looked at her, and used the word extinction. She got confused and thought they were talking about wiping humans out here, but their friendliness didn't add up with that fact. Over a period of time she realised they had come to stop the people's of 21 from killing themselves off in a fit of fossil fuelled profiteering. She discovered that two of the Steve's were scientists, which didn't surprise her that much, but the Steve from 2 was an animal fanatic, a zoo keeper of sorts, he looked after critters on his version of the Earth, actually talked with them, it was this that caught her attention most of all.

"Well communication is all a question of relationships, I mean talking about coffee brands with a sea lion is pointless as they will have not even evolved the words for cups. Whereas trying to talk about clothing to a bonobo monkey is futile, so you have to work out the common ground between yourself and the species you are communicating with. Once you have that you can get to the relevant stuff, which is why I am here, as we need to communicate with your people's effectively but I have yet to find much common ground. Money for example is something none of us

understand, it's a psychological value system. But it rules this place, and we do not pretend to get it at all. So in order to communicate we have to understand you and your needs." She sat back thinking of the story angles, then said.

"You can talk to Sea Lions?"

BRUSHES OF BLISS

The anthropologist stood watching the busy world blur past, the tent behind her was making flappy noises as the gentle breeze blew against it, needing some kind of refreshment she walked to the beach and then kicked her shoes off and watched the water rushing to and from her, she stepped into it and felt the cool ocean rush against her feet, pausing she contemplated the sea weed that had been accumulating as she felt her skin adjusting to the sensations of the sand and the water. Sea gulls sang out and she emptied her minds of the men she had just met. The industrialists had stunned her with the simplicity of it all, they wouldn't accept the help of an enemy, the Caliphate man had been sat with them, and the relationships had not been apparent before the meeting, yet she had attempted to understand them, convinced that it was a difference in the localised ideologies of 21. The business men had been a last ditch attempt to resolve many of the escalating issues, but she and her colleagues had rapidly figured out the relationships were on a profit scale level, yet as unfamiliar as she was with the word cynicism, she was now getting a lesson in its application.

As a virus I see it very differently, you see as she had been communicating with the many diverse people's of 21, I had been doing the same with the many micro organisms, and was alarmed that nothing that resembled myself had evolved here as yet, if I give you an example you can comprehend, you are human, imagine that your closest relative was a spider monkey, thats pretty much where it's at for me, nothing enlightening at all really, no communication beyond cause and effect, I began to perceive 21 very differently from Jeanette, she at least had the illusion of communication to cling onto. Although it was mechanically correct to call it talking, communication it wasn't. I am wondering how to put this. You know that I am a super virus, everywhere on Zero, I am one of the reasons the murder rate is so low, but how would you as an inhabitant of 21 react if I said Ebola was cute, or described TB as silly, I could wipe out every living thing, so for me at that level even the HIV virus is an amateur.

In its prokaryotic class HIV is the most evolved virus you have, seriously Ebola is more old school than your bible is, pre dates it obviously but its dark, composed of little more than the causal threads of opportunistic logic. Simply exploiting its opportunities, whilst the HIV virus at least has the common sense to hide in plain site. Lurking malevolently is a viral prerogative, but Ebola once activated is like some kind of deranged cavalry charge, and the virus it is loves the rushing, it's all about the chase whereas HIV stalks its victims with a declarative patience that is worthy of the Buddha. For me who is technically at the other end of the evolutionary scale, and helping evolve that which evolved from me, it's a bit like a visit to the good old days. There was a time after a meteor struck that I fell upon the dinosaurs with an energised bliss, it was a massacre on the scale of the googolplex, an art house extinction level event, yet after my proclivities I wasn't satiated, after all was said and done the measure of my fatal scale was one of isolation, I had quite simply put, run out of victims. In a real way I went dormant for a long time, millions of years passed as I whiled away time in milder forms, yet in the hominids I saw a potential, something flickered with those early infections, an imagination of sorts formed from them, lead to a manipulation of sorts, I grew in the balances of the development, as our species intertwined, a connectivity of sorts started in that

random rough and tumble thrusting world of life.

As their minds developed so did I, this farcical dance went on for many millennia, until one day a few thousand years from now I evolved into this being that has head napped a writer called Steve, and because of quantum foams often ridiculous dominsionless instability, I have emerged from time as a being that is as emergent as any human is. On Zero, they have evolved science, it's the same as here in 21, the rules are not that different, but the mind sets that there are on Zero have reached a radically different set of conclusions, simply because of their perspective point of view. Take quantum physics, it was rapidly figured out that the concepts of relativity lead you to time, and there it was figured out that time is an emergent phenomenon that is interconnected with particle entanglement, and reflected as a form of dimensionless none causal time throughout the entire system of quantum foam that's in and around everything and even present in nothing. This is not that different from your own levels of understanding here in 21. You see surrounding everything is a dimensionless reality, it's not causal, it doesn't do linear, a particle can theoretically die before it has been created, a side effect of this is that I can be here there and everywhere, a fact that is due mainly to my seeming inorganic structures.

Yet on Zero, emergent time is everything, quantum physics is emergent, chemistry, physics and biology are simple emergent structures, the whole structure of human science is basically using the foundation stones of thermo dynamics. Even evolution, here they see emergent time as the window of opportunity that humanity and everything has evolved to exploit because that is all there is, a 200 millisecond window, a moment that enables momentum, fuelled by dimensionless time in the very foundation of quantum foam that everything else is assembled from. Perspective use it or lose it. If Zero Steve spoke science to you, it would be with the passion that lies beyond lust, it would be on his own personal terms, he would talk of how animated and emotional stardust can get, and that as his wife Jeanette knows only too well is a view shared with many on Zero, the place where they mapped emotional responses first, and a place where my fingerprint was finally found by none other than the Steve Merrick of the real world you inhabit. Your emotions rule your responses, they are your responses, fear happiness all of it has a biological survival implication attached to it, and as your social structures evolved so did your need to solve often complex social problems, that is known by every kindergarten kiddie on Zero, but here, well.

I

f you compare the mindsets involved, the differences in communication, I advised Jeanette to tread cautiously with the people's of 21, where lies have evolved to a different level than they have on Zero. Where saying something is great can have any number of different connotations attached to it, on Zero it doesn't, in fact Zero has never really developed sarcasm to the same heights you have here, yet even in the diplomatic language is a level of necessary concealed layers of multi faceted duplicity, and on Zero there is none of that. Picture your politicians here, do any of you expect them to tell the truth, is honesty even an entry level qualification in 21's political structures. On Zero it is, which may be too much for you to bear conceptually, but they have honest political's, and elections, at my last count there are on average 3700 global elections every day on Zero, 45000 local ones, and not one single professional politician in existence, people on Zero elect people, and honesty is key. Now look at your world and realise that deception is everything here, then ask yourself what a hippy angel from paradise could achieve with the political systems you have evolved.

All that before I mention the economic system that could make the morally bankrupt Roman emperor Caligula weep, here it gets totally wild on 21, and yes on Zero they have never evolved money, or any form of financial system worth mentioning, having said that they never evolved slavery either but there you have it. So how could they cope with a system that puts profit above

everything else, a system where corporations have the same if not more rights than people do, and a system that guarantees economic misery for the majority whilst rewarding incrementally up the ladders of that very same system. On Zero they have no class system, but they do have fights, they are human, but they don't use weapons, and when they do fight it is mostly posturing with a bit of punching and an occasional bite, so often do they do this that you can time your watch by them on Zero, but as they all know it is about letting off steam. Here you actually use missiles and starvation as weapons, so even if they are in many ways noisy and boisterous, they are also not so full of pent up aggression that they are likely to kill someone. Yet in the economics was the downfall of the rescue, a downfall that is still many months away, but a failure none the less. The polluters must profit, the same way that housing markets can become inflated in value if there are not enough houses, or the same way that sustainable energy can become dangerous if it will disturb the balance of fossil fuel subsidies and profits. Profits that never existed on Zero have become everything here, and in that the hedge funding venture capitalists are simply reflecting the viruses of 21. Lost as every other living thing is, in a world of cause and effect, like Ebola they cash in burning everything until little is left, and like my communications with my fellow viruses, Jeanette may as well have been talking with a spider monkey.

THE LULL IN HIS FIGHT

On another beach many miles away, Psycho Steve was curled up asleep in the sand, unlike Jeanette he was comfortable in his mind, surprised to discover that he was happier now that he was murdering them, he even had a dog, a collie, he had called it Fawkes after the original parliamental bomber, Neoklis was searching through the Internet, seeking someone worthy of death, he gazed at the holiday home, then looked out to the Mediterranean, wondering how long this murderous run would last. If I look at Neoklis's emotions, on one very real level he was happy to be a real police man finally, he was cutting through all the red tape of global corruption, and Steve wouldn't have killed as many without his help. Unlike Steve, Neoklis was undercutting his own moral foundations, the police officer didn't expect to survive the events of this book, he didn't but even he couldn't have foreseen his own death at the hands of the insidious Rembrandt organisation. Steve had already stabbed one of their members, his leaf sword had sung loudly with that first kill, but as our assassin sleeps he is blissfully unaware of the ex KGB units machinations, nor of the frenzy his actions had started.

As a virus I lack the linear logic system that humans have, I simply hitchhike pinching bits of thought here and there as I stumble upon them, and since Neoklis's mind is nothing but paranoia and Steve is lost in one of his over imaginative visual allegorical dreams, It may be a good time to introduce the Rembrandt organisation here during this lull in the action. To understand this you have to picture the world during the cold war, I have enough trouble differentiating the relentless wars being fought on 21, but this was the East West ideological nuclear stand off period of your history. The spies which Rembrandt once were, had at least some kind of ideological standard back then, they were commissioned to bring about the downfall of the Western world. Don't get too hung up on that because their opponents were trying to archive the reverse of the same thing. The Rembrandt's latest commander was like Steve a child of the Vietnam war, and surprisingly they knew each other as children very well.

During the first years of their existence in the late fifties, they achieved so much through bribery and blackmail that the Kremlin could have been forgiven for seeing nothing but a victorious future ahead of them, it was a vigorously simple system that was applied, coercion and blatant blackmail

played their roles admirably as the Western governments were infiltrated in some places piece meal, and as an example, take a pervert, or a gay man in the sixties, a man who is in a position of authority, and watch him, film him, set him up, and after you have all the proofs you need, present them and make that walking and often political obscenity yours. The trick for the operatives was in switching off their own morality for the greater cause, so whether it was a child molester or a corrupted thief, the mission was simple, own them. It didn't end there though, which was the genius of the original group, once brought and sold, the industrialist, politician, scientist, journalist, police man or woman, became a commodity, they were protected by the organisation, introduced to other more powerful members, and using a semi nepotistic mechanism, they allowed their captured doves to flourish up the ladders of their prospective societies. This global organisation was operating on a scale that is beyond their often under budgeted opponents. It was in every country in your world, and powerful beyond your wildest dreams. As a virus I know an infection when I see it, and everywhere the powerful clubs formed the criminalised profited, breeding like any reasonable cancer in your societies, the Rembrandt's grew, and a lot of the time those involved had no idea they were working for and with the commies.

It was an answer to a very simple question. How does a communist state beat a capitalist one? The answer was frighteningly simple. "It buys it."

Van Gogh brought everything, people, property, clubs, and many big businesses, in the cut throat world of the bottom line the organisation even made a profit, they even had their own banks, which also had a lot of insider information advantages, advantages they rarely used, as this top secret had to be kept. Flashing forwards through the sixties, seventies and eighties, you hit the nineties, where with all its global reach this one organisation watched in horror as the wall fell down, Nguyen, Steve's friend, had stared blankly at the televised images as the Berlin wall was torn down, Steve meanwhile shot this event, taking it in his stride almost as if it was nothing at all, but Nguyen sat for a few days, aware that everything that the Remrandt organisation had done was effectively over, he even foresaw the crash of the communist financial system ahead, and then realised one sad truth. It was time for Rembrandt to go freelance.

If you have ever wondered why your government did something that flew in the face of reason, it is probably because of Nguyens decision, the freelance services he offered your corporates were beyond anything the Chinese or American governments could, he with partial effort could smooth the way, so effectively that even if your product was going to wipe out the species you would have found a roller coaster ride of accepting hands. Then to flex his muscles he threw a few old connections to the wolves, exposed their corrupted or pedophile tendencies, and he chose to use the UK as his example. Fearing exposure, those under their control saw the example as a warning, and for Nguyen it guaranteed their continued subservience to the Rembrandt crew, but the profits have become obscene, and as Steve sleeps in blissful ignorance of any of these facts, Nguyen is dealing with two problems, and frowning, one is the invaders, he has an action plan for them, but the other is his friend, images of old Saigon litter his adult mind, and his friend although not political in any way that is recognisable to you has at least kept a kind of faith, a humanity, and despite Nguyens efforts to steer him from stories previously, Nguyen has to decide if it is time to kill him, he shrugs as he looks at the sleeping figure on his screen, briefly he ponders about how many satellites he can command, and then leaning back he flicks the screen off, the killing spree was so far good for business, the man he had killed though useful was a parasite, and knowing that Rembrandt was some kind of infection, he smiled at the thought that Steve may be some kind of antidote. Finally he decided not to kill him yet, there was plenty of time for that later.

WHISPERING VOICES AND DYING BEES

The cartel man had not seen it coming as he stepped from his car with an arrogant sloth of a woman besides him, both of them deserved each other as their criminality and inhuman briberies had left my mad mans mind in knots, and without realising which was in charge I decided that both of these Mafiosi had to go. The man stopped, absorbing the many corpses in the Italian court yard, without seeing the beauty of the dusk light that was filtering upon them, without sensing anything but his own mortal coil the man stepped back to the car. When the Ruger fires the flash is an incredible one, like a flash gun it freeze frames all within its arc. Yet this pseudo business man had more blood directly upon his hands than anyone from Game Of Thrones could have, and the woman, well she had a crueller streak than that, like lightening their lights were snuffed dark, and like lightening I vanished, on a bicycle. It had been a tricky one to pull off as the security was efficient, the castle impressive, and my two dragons were particularly influential and dangerous, yet with patience and a silenced Walther PP pistol, they had all been slain, although the woman had drawn a shivery silver Walther of her own from her Dolce and Gabbana choice of bag, she had muffed the safety catch and fell to her husbands side oblivious of light. What fate had befallen these star crossed lovers, what resulted in my tackling the Mafia boss, the Capo of Capos. They were as entwined with humanities downfall as any of our venture capitalists are, frightening all as they had killed for many of their corporate sponsors, smuggled all, including the ivory, the bullets, the people, the children, all that before we mention drugs, like who cares about drugs anymore anyway, if they had just been drug smugglers, well, would I have bothered, but they weren't, they were amoral, for hire, and sadly the police don't know it was me who killed them yet.

Obviously they will figure it out when they read this entry, it's possible the International Criminal Court may not be efficient, but a confession is a confession, and in this journal that I am writing the investigators will pour through it for me. I actually wonder if they will correct any typos. Yet for the record, the Capo was not wiped out by rival interests, it was me, and it was one where my sword slept, so the investigators can be forgiven for not putting two and two together. In a cell nearby mine is an African ex dictator, he killed millions, or the conflict he fuelled did, he spoke to me as I ate earlier, so much so that I saw him as a wannabe Hitler, yet I shall endeavour to kill this inhuman skunk in his cell. Maybe a little imprisoned murder is what the doctor ordered, I do feel better now that I am thinking of my mission again, and if as I am to believe I will never get out of this prison, then where's the harm in killing a few freaking war criminals.

I could claim that it's insulting to be locked up with them, like the Serbian maniac, he killed everything in his path on his journey to the ICC, and although I can claim the moral high ground, I did kill quite a few of my own to get here. However he killed racially, Muslims and Croatians, he slaughtered for his own gain too, whereas I killed the capitalists for the benefit of humanity, and I think we are better off without them all. To put such as I in a walled prison full of the power crazed is almost like sentencing me to serve my time in Paradise. So one by one I shall figure out how to kill them, and you Maria have been warned. For the record if you are not Maria, she is my interrogator, investigator and an all round expert on Steve Merrick. Our chats are friendly, as is the fact that she encourages me to write, she also thinks I may be sane enough to face trial, which is flattering really. I know she will read these words too, and I know she will then endeavour to protect the war criminals as she is a pretty committed police officer, so by writing these words both of us now face a challenge.

Earlier she was asking me about my first manifesto, or as I like to see it, my none manifesto. I don't think announcing who you want to kill is a manifesto, nor did I call for a global revolution, although I did recommend murdering capitalists in your locale, which proudly a few copy cats did do. Some of them are still at large too which is impressive and more than I can currently claim, but never say die as I will escape somehow. In fact I have a plan already but won't write that here. Besides its the second time she has caught me. Neither time could I shoot her or try and harm her either, as this Spaniard is a determined copper, I could say old school, in as much as she believes in right and wrong and won't bend, in fact shooting her would be self defeating to my cause so she recaptured me, but this time I had been pretty sloppy, unlike the first time, no the first time she went Sherlock Holmes on my ass and caught me fair and square. I hadn't seen her coming either, and seeing a curvy broad waving a magnum in my face was a surprise so I put my hands in the air, or more accurately in the sand. My comrade more by luck than design was on another island when she tracked me, and Fawkes was equally busy with some local dog related stuff, so as I awoke on that beach, I found myself staring down the barrel of a model 13 S+W revolver. She has a habit of clucking her teeth, which is not unattractive, but equally she had tracked me to Gran Canaria, and then read me my rights.

I am a bit in awe of her, I mean who goes up against a crazed killer without back up? Nor wearing a bullet proof vest? Who in their right minds does that? I could have shot my way past her the second time, I mean that, but having gotten to know her and recognising that she actually does do her best to catch any bad guy, well how could any self respecting moral murderer do that? Its by the by and I shall escape, maybe its love, or maybe we both like the chase, who knows, but she asked me about the manifesto, my you tube moment. Like anyone who has been a photographic artist couldn't have knocked out a quick video during a killing spree?

I could be proud of the fact that my words were spontaneous, the fact that they were coherent doesn't hurt either, so I sat in front of a smart phone and let rip, it was the sunlight that gave me away to her though, she sat and worked out where I was in relation to the sun, narrowed it down to the island of Gran Canaria and then flew there, on her own dime too, in fact knowing now what I do, my next escapee video will not be translatable by geography, its strange to admit that after a lifetime of working with existing light it was the same existing light that was my downfall on that occasion. Yet having watched it here in prison I was surprised at the sanity of the words, which for all it's shortness are clear as crystal. Without flags, organisation or party politics, the video hinges on the words, and I am unsurprised that copy cats are coming out of the woodwork nor that it has been viewed and banned more often than a porno movie.

"Light, we all reach for it, we all love it's intensities, all of us even the blind can feel the warmth of light upon our skins. It universal. As is our reaction to it. Yet in our reflection we often have to turn away, in screens we see the worst of our species illuminated by light, light that has travelled billions of miles to reach us does that. Yet think of the sites you have all seen, the relentless wars, the starvation, the stigmatisations, the ethnic cleansing, the religions, and then super impose the environmental impacts over all of those frightening events. Realities that make us all fearful, realities that make us turn away and possibly effect our sleep. I took these images, alongside many others, saw them until recently as clear evidence of our roots in the action and reaction furnaces of our universe, call this the rules of stardust, which is where all life starts from, action and reaction."

Here I pause thinking of my next words, the silence is not alienating, in fact for a viewer it allows them time to think too.

"Once I loved light, I was a fetishist to its altar, it strengthened my work and illuminated my world, it was everything to me. Until I saw that it exposed our darknesses, our uglinesses, and our violences too. Violences we are no longer satisfied to inflict upon ourselves, but have chosen to inflict upon the natural world. Our oceans are slowly giving in to our greedy incestuous and suicidal demands, our wild life is now going extinct at a rate that so far exceeds the natural balance of things that we may have to rename our epoch, in fact we have set in motion pollutant and greenhouse mechanics that have the potential in there impact to exceed the pre Cambrian mass extinction event. We do that. All of us. Yet there are those that are so far gone in the brain pan that they see the profits and not the costs of their actions. These are the people I am killing, and I urge you to do the same."

I smile here, calmly talking my thoughts out loud, releasing the idea to the world. Then as if from the recesses of my minds chest of draws I continue.

"Economics is not real, it is something we made up, it has now mutated into a global cult, a cult that worships the bottom line, a cult that sees nothing but it's profits as important. This is the system we have to kill, or evolve. It is not real, it is not a force like gravity." I drop my sunglasses to illustrate gravity. "That is a force of physics, it's measurable and quantifiable, we can even manipulate it, defy it or control it, our machinery does that, the car or the airplane are just two ways we manipulate gravity. We have all seen it. Economics is at best a massed psychology, a system of human invention that only functions because of our massed delusions about it. Economics is not gravity, it is all in your head. Collectively all of us are chasing the money, and money is not anything but a psychological value, and the only thing that gravity shares with economics is that both of them are manipulable, and all of us including me are being manipulated, by the forces and people in control of a made up process."

I stop speaking and pull a very black and deadly looking weapon from behind me, my right hand blurs as I widen the angle of the cameras lens.

"This folks is a Sten Gun, it was an economic weapon of world war two, the British applied Occam's Razor to the sub machine gun, the result was this, it's blunt, it's to the point, it can be made by any engineering student in any garage on the planet, you can make the bullets too." I start to take it apart showing the pieces. "It was made to be cheap, disposable and it killed fascists, or anyone it was pointed at. Everywhere from China to Australia this weapon was made, in the end the Nazis made them too. It works very simply, action and reaction, the recoil feeds the next shot, and considering we are all living in an economic world that could make Caligula weep it could be a part of a massed psychological reaction against the economic."

The bolt of the reassembled gun slams forwards to make my point.

"My point is that we have become impotent, we watch unable to change the outcome of the images or events we see, the movies that entertain us all are as good an example as any, we cannot stop anything that happens in them, so we have all become spectators, we witness without any effective impact, and it it shouldn't be that way, it shouldn't effect our collective psyches that way. In this video I give you a weapon, a weapon any garden variety mechanic can make. You can take action against this obscene system, to illustrate it, my next head will be taken with this weapon I am holding. Yet this diatribe is not over yet, as no one should mistake my actions as an attack, they are a defence, and they may have come too late for all of us, and for that I apologise to you all. The

next time you look at the world, try and see it for what it actually is, not the illusion your experiences have created, and if you can, throw away the mask of civilisation that has infected everyone, the truth is that it's a civilisation that has us all enslaved to a minority group, call em the one percent, the illuminati, the super rich, call them anything you want too, but my fight is with the polluters, polluters who put profit before anything else. Whatever the injustice you may feel, I call on all of us to kill a capitalist, to kill our dear leaders, even our religious power freaks, but never kill a child ever, leading by example is not the same as leading by psychosis, which is how we are being lead now, and without action we will be lead by these psychotics to a future where human extinction is a reality. So for every futile death, for every mind twisted beyond rationality by the events of our negative economics it is time to get naughty."

I smile and let loose a chuckle, as I watched the video I am surprised at the calmness of my own delivery, personally I hate hearing my own voice, but it is gentle, almost tranquil as I call for massed murder, and there is warmth in it too, I also had the sense to stop myself from rambling of on tangents, but all in all the call to arms worked, and considering that Sten guns started to pop up all over the planet the idea was a sound one too. However after a few moments of silence I brought it to a close with the following words.

"I would love to be able to take prisoners, but the circumstances are against that option, so when you have to kill make it fast, and as painless as you can, don't rejoice in stopping a human heart from beating but do not carry it either. The reality of our world is that we never slowed down our industrial output after the second world war, it is so structured now that obsolescence is a business model, other business models mean it is not even profitable to make snake venom anti venom, so thousands die because there is no profit in it, welcome to a world where children are targeted by advertising, and where nobody expects a politician to be honest or even to have our best interest at heart. This is a species gone mad, and the cure is possibly a nine millimetre bullet from a Sten gun. Or." I pause again and softly say. "As Shakespeare so eloquently put it. When our actions do not our fears can and will make us traitors, and you all have to ask yourself who are you betraying, and if you have any doubts about the who, go and look in the mirror. For myself I will not rest until I can love light again, but for now I hate it, I hate all that it shows me." My hands reaches for the camera, but before I switch off I add. "I would love to say be gentle it's good for you, as it is good for you, but instead I have to urge all of you to kill a capitalist, and with that I wish you all good luck and good hunting."

Strange what a year can do to you, the relaxed mass murderer of corporate lusts that I saw, bears little resemblance to the man that is now typing these words. Now I am still relaxed, but also being locked up is a deprivation of daylight, and I still hate that light. Yet to sit thinking and writing words that only those with a security rating can read is as crackpot as anything else about this legal pantomime I have found myself in. Intriguingly the Invaders are retreating, they only have a small toe hold in Cyprus now, and the intellectual blockade has denied them access to the UN delegates, as to what is happening there your guess is as good as mine is, but that next kill, the Sten gun guy, well that was a weird one.

THE PESTICIDAL DILEMMA.

Like the mans heart the train was confined, like his head it was narrow, as I prowled towards the first class section, the green and browns of a minor city flashed blurring by, the train wallowed to the fit as it curved a bend and I supported myself against a chair, then reached the buffet car,

another English city flashed passed, as I glanced at the opaque watch I was wearing, Siegfried Sassoons poem muscled itself into my mind as my mind casually registered the time. "As time ticks blank upon their wrists." The frayed seats with there bluish and red stripes conflicted with the green that was flowing by outside, and my ears popped, so I ordered a coffee and leant against the uncomfortably designed grey bar. Maybe the railway didn't want anyone to linger here at the buffet, or maybe they just hire depressives to do the design works, but the visual psychology was uncomfortable, deliberately uncomfortable.

In the narrow isle I almost oscillated from side to side wondering if this was the least straight rail line in Europe, between violent lurches the train would screech out objecting in protests from its tracks. There is something calming in the sounds of a train, like a regular heartbeat as the gentle thuds on the tracks roll in casual wavelengths towards your ears. As womb like as a good train can be, this was not a good train, so I pulled myself towards first class wondering how the hell I would aim the weapon. Yet the dragon was sat nibbling something and reading, oh yes he was reading of finance, which is possibly why the bees are dying off, maybe if he paid more attention to the science he wouldn't be on my list. Running the Consanto group as he did, the group who's pesticides seem to have done far more harm over there many decades of use. I looked further into the carriage to see the aggregates man, like an unexpected bonus of carnage he sat exuding a clam air of successful tolerance, it was too good to be true, by dumb luck the Jack of diamonds on my kill list sat arrogantly unaware of his own mortality, I sat down, and glanced at the GPS on the mobile phone.

Experiences had grown during my killing spree, planning a way in is one thing, but escaping the vorpal swords of the local constabulary was another thing all together, and considering my years on the Hackney Gazette local newspaper I knew that Scotland Yard was a difficult nut to escape if you were a garden variety murderer, let alone a high profile Interpol maniac. The inadequate progressed up the poles slowly, admittedly the alien invaders no matter how friendly they were were higher on the priority board but even the FBI had me on their most wanted listings. Becoming infamous is actually more satisfying than fame per se, the same way a home made bomb is more satisfying than one off the arms dealers supermarket shelves. So in more ways than one I was happily plotting my moves after I offed the two corporate coils of shuffle. So I had bikes in place to escape the train, and my first option was coming up, so I opened the bag, and assembled the Sten gun.

The Dragons didn't notice it, nor did any of the other passengers, literally I put it together and slammed a clip into its side without raising a single British eyebrow, looking at the GPS and having worked out the trains breaking speed I pulled the alarm, which did get people's attention, the Consanto man glared at me, I don't think he saw the gun till the last second, in fact I got the impression he was angered at my pulling the alarm on the train, so I shot him at point blank range in the head, gore twisted in the holed metals of the train. Someone screamed, as the train began to roll to a stop, I turned an the aggregate man was starting to run away, I laughed and fired a short three round burst, watching him flail to the floor, yet he began to crawl away, an old woman shrank in her seat as I passed, so I shouted out. "Relax once I have killed that guy I am leaving." This caused a scream worthy of a fifties B movie from a man sat behind me, so I walked to the crawling rodent, put the Sten to the back of his head and fired. "You see all done folks now I will be leaving."

Having reduced the first class lounge to nervous wrecks I jumped from the train unloading the gun, and then dropping it to the ground, slipping the magazine for it into my pocket I started to jog the quarter of a mile or so the the bike. Firearms are hard to get in Britain in fact I had to build parts of

the Sten myself, but I had lucked out in the East End and scored and Argentine Browning High Power, which although it isn't my choice of weapon did work. I have never been a fan of the Nine Millimetre bullet, preferring in automatics a 32 or 45, they are easier to use but then again I have a preference for a revolver, so the auto was at best a compromise, it was on my mind at the time as I ran, I thought of the embarrassment of being caught with it, I knew the Flying squad would be after me in mere hours, I knew the police wouldn't rest, so it was surprising to have changed jacket and be over fifty miles away. My fears were with me the whole time I was in London, the British had a a knack for cornering most terrorists, radicals or religiously motivated problems. What resources they would have thrown at an anti capitalist terrorist like me could prove pretty catastrophic, that's according to the Daily Mail at least. So I chewed my nails for a week in hiding, reading about myself, I thought the papers would be full of the alien invaders but the public had seemingly gotten bored by it pretty quickly, whereas a Robin Hood assassin was obviously riveting for everyone to read of.

Unsurprisingly the Sun newspaper castrated me verbally, the Independent canonised me to the point where even I thought I could have angelic potential, whilst Daily Mail readers would probably be looking under their beds for me. The Guardian had me profiled by some psychological specialist. It was as creepy as having an accurate horoscope, seriously the guy seemed to know me inside and out. There were mentions of my childhood, war, and the term groping about was used, but ultimately I was seen as a product of a failed political system. Little old me was illustrative of a failing system, the shrink had read my writings, much like many of the police had, and realised that a love of the natural world had lead me to a precarious place, a point of no return where a mind pushed beyond rationality had snapped, my rampage was understandable, quantifiable and according to the writer I would not stop until I was either killed or won. None of the one percent could relax until then.

Imagine a turning point, it was as I read that article, where my physical abilities as a photographer, and my psychological abilities enabled me to operate alone against all comers, I kept a copy of that one, summing up she said. "A scientist held back by economics that under normal circumstances would be someone worth listening too, but in these extraordinary circumstances was one dangerous force against what he views as oppressive, political and stupid elements in our society, and in our pollutants, he includes economics as the most toxic one of all." It was a kind of awakening, as I hadn't been paying any real attention to my press coverage up until then, and suddenly my little murder spree was of more news value than aliens from another dimension were. As was the 10 million dollar reward for my capture, issued by none other than Consanto themselves. It's funny isn't it, after all of the realistic argument, the articles, the intelligence in them, all that I had done as photojournalist was a complete waste of time, all that I had to do to wake people up was kill a bunch of capitalists, that was all it took, and I knew then and there that I should make an announcement. It was then that I knew the Sten Gun would and could become an important weapon for the whole world. So I sat thinking, and wondered where Scotland Yard were. I found out as read the paper further, the budgets had been cut to the bone, the economics that I despise was actually coming to my rescue, the Yard under Prime minister April's government couldn't afford the task force, and as the article suggested, the Yards budget was so low that they couldn't have convicted Hitler. So I breathed out and headed for the Canary islands.

THE WOBBLING REALITIES OF COMMERCE AND POLITICS

Zero Steve was stood looking lifeless and as if made of wood, the little anthropologist was

animatedly arguing with the man from the Vatican, pointing at the many screens that surrounded them, all of them showed empty seats, the man shrugged and listened patiently as she almost pleaded with him, whilst giving him a universal genetic formula that slowed down the ageing process. He absently held the paper, looking at the symbols with a scientific ignorance that simply put, reduced them to magic, miracles and symbols of sorcery. The man from the Vatican was not a stupid man either, he understood the value of them, but also saw an ethical dilemma, a dilemma that had never existed on Zero, where the moral topography is very different, yet to the man from 21, the dangers were apparent, immediate and clear. Yet it was clear that the rest of those representing the world had abandoned the proceedings, they had all stood up from this video conference and left. Which is why the normally agile man Zero Steve was now looking like some kind of lifeless Pinocchio. Although they loved one and other, the two people from Zero could not have been more different, he was fiery and in some ways irrational, prone to intuitive leaps that bemused others especially as they tended to work. Whilst Jeanette was softer, more rational and less emotional, but for me as virus it was illuminating to see their different reactions to the rejection.

Imagine someone knocked on your door and solved all of your problems for you, at no cost to you, how would you react, it was like paying off a million mortgages, like curing a terminal illness, like flying at the speed of light, all at once. Yet despite all of these gifts which in your terms were much more than you could have dreamed possible, the men and women had left demanding they withdraw from 21. I could have warned them but even though I am god like I am not a god, and the people of Zero would not have believed me, like an abuse victim rejecting love they in turn were rejected by the abused. All the cures and solutions were taken, offered without cost, whilst at the same time the people giving them were rejected. In many cases the solutions they gave solved real problems, but they also caused problems, real problems for the industries and the stock holders that profited from creating the problems, or the medicinal losses from research into a cure for cancer now outweighed the benefits of having a real cancer cure in your hands. How could people who had no economic system of any real note have comprehended the power of the bottom line, in Zero all research is is pure research, not a mess of profit based systems. In 21 the search for the nextViagra tablet was of more priority than curing Ebola was, and on a planet where it wasn't economical enough to make a snake bite remedy well you can possibly see the failure coming, but for the minds of Zero the failure was inexplicable.

The Jeanette from 3 was stood curtly in a corner of the massive tent, her arm folded as she listened, she was of another mindset, she felt that a quick greased lightening shock and awe style invasion would solve this ridiculous problem, whether it was her anger at the stupidity of this failure or her tactical awareness, only time could tell. For the Jeanette from Zero, she was still trying to use logic, convinced it would be a universal language, she pleaded to the man from the Church, the only man physically present, unaware of the United Nations voting that was taking place as she wrestled with the bitterest twist in this situation, the man shrugged. Her husband sat silently, he was beyond brooding, beyond anger, in fact Zero Steve was sat in a state of bewildered disbelief at what was happening around him. It had always been noted that he didn't tolerate stupidity well, but 21 was a fucking lunatic asylum, they were rejecting cures, physics, science, to make money, to profit for a few through a system that they had collectively made up in their heads called economics, immobile he sat oblivious to the vocal argument his wife had been putting forwards, until he stood ramrod stif and said in soft and quiet voice. "This is an illness we have no cure for."

In a very real way this was the beginning of the end for the decimated attempt to rescue 21, when the commander looked through all of his options and realised that nothing short of a total invasion

could have altered the balances of this mad house called 21. When he realised that the religious murderers of ISIS and Assad were defensible against their interventions he saw that even a full on conquest could fail. Stupidity at such toxic levels was potentially contagious too, and that doubt had him worried, he stepped forwards to Jeanette, held her by the shoulders and whispered into her ears softly. The man couldn't hear his words, but when he turned to him he smiled rather weakly, stretched thin across Zero Steve's face as he spoke the smile was more eloquent. "Thank you for trying but you can leave now." Holding her hands the pair walked to the portal for Zero, preparing a report that had to be put to the vote, a part of me went with them whilst a part of me stayed, you see being a virus I knew how to change things, and it was time for me to join forces with Psycho Steve, but the two leaders went through that portal, and you may be wondering what Steve whispered into her ear. It was four words. He simply said. "This is game over." In the same way that Admiral Yamamoto knew that the war was lost when he launched the attack at Pearl Harbour, Zero Steve knew it too. Which is a shame because Zero Steve wasn't ever fighting a war.

MR VEE MEETS PSYCHO STEVE

Look at the crippled mind that is lying upon the beach, he has just sent his manifesto and is now in his third hour of the calmest of sleeps, he has launched an attack upon the volcanic forces of the global establishments, he knows that they have united against him and also the invaders, yet even if he is an afterthought in the minds twisted by power, he is happy to have their attention. I as a virus can sense his unconcerned calm, yet I have timed this wrong, or should I say my lack of timing is incredible because I can see her stalking him, a lethal looking gun from the school called revolvers is in her hands as she creeps and stalks towards him. In his tranquil mind I find a place of surprising clarity, a point of ego interrupted, he is a force, not so much a person anymore, emotional yes but pushed beyond the usual boundaries that are associated with feelings, yet he lies in the sun unarmed, even unconcerned at the many dangers ahead of him. She kicks his legs, he rolls sleepily aside, and then blinks slowly focusing on the magnum that is inches from his nose. Her accented words reach his mind slowly but surely, he likes her voice and her smile but accepts he is caught for the moment.

Even I am shocked at his mirth at being captured, and he doesn't even object as the handcuffs encircle vice like upon his wrists. She holsters her weapon still speaking, he nods admitting he will cause no trouble. In her mind is a confusion, she masks it well, but is shocked to have caught him, confused that he didn't struggle as she had expected him too. I sense something wrong deep within her, and finally see it, a brain tumour, a sort of abstract suicide attempt has brought her this success, and her confusion is hidden in her still beating heart. In his mind I see something different, he knew he would escape, he knew his work wasn't finished but also knew the value of legend, in fact this was some part of his plan. He wanted it for now. Sunlight filtered through the trees as they walk for the car, and she never relaxed having expected a demon, and has instead found one happily cuffed but shouting for his dog. She even helped attract the mutt's attention, I did too but when a female is about, then all males become dogs, so his absence is no surprise.

Casually she searches for her map in the chaotic landscape of her car, Steve had seen enough from his passenger seat to know she more or less lived in it, she finds it and clucks her teeth together and smiles, scanning it she looks back to him and smiles, he smiles back, then as she fumbles her keys she asks him a one word question.

"Why?"

Sunlight sharp yet mute reflected in the car but he could see the scene reflected in her left eye as her eyes scanned him. "Well I could ask if you have seen any of my work, not my handy work but my pictures? That's one major reason on its own, I mean this but when every problem, all the violences or harm, when all of that winds its way back cancerously." By reflex her eyes stiffen at the word cancer, gently exposing her situation to the photographer who over time has become adept at seeing the person that is hiding behind the masks of humanity. I felt a sadness come from him for her, as he continues speaking, an empathy of sorts hidden behind the killer, it has a passion and a strangeness that conceals his love of the diverse thing he calls a human being, as a virus this surprises me, but it's there, even when stopping a heart beat he saw it as mercy for the misguided, but then he is insane now, but I felt a need to see him before this evolution. "To the word economics, but when that same force is stifling our own evolution or our ability to halt or slow global warming then what else could I have done." He gazes from the window, glancing at the light filtering through the sandy air and glowing with a dull green from the trees above the red car. "On the one hand that could be just eloquent bull shit though, as the truth is even simpler, we deny, deny everything, and when denial becomes a force of our nature then something has to oppose it. Whether its London, or Beirut, poverty rules, and we deny that the forces of economics have us chained to them, and also that this psychological economic reality is beyond any of our control, so much so that I concluded we had to have a cull in order to awaken the rest of the flock up to their own apathy, or at least make all of us aware of that." Pausing he looked straight into her face, it was a nice face but the lines showed a life spent in a criminal hell, the eyes though vibrant held a tiredness that could have been unfathomable without her badge. "I awoke that's all, maybe I was over loaded by it all, but I awoke and now want to awaken others too, create people who are in charge of their own lives once more, not chained to someone else's ladder, I think I was always this way but just didn't use guns beforehand, as I remember that from schools, all those kids sold on a future made up by someone else, jumping through the same hoops and ladders other people's great grandparents had made, whereas I just wanted to make my own ladder, so much like the kids game lets say snakes and ladders was my main reason, besides why did you become a cop?"

Maria's English was good but she was glad she was recording his words as she didn't get all of them or some of what she thought would be nuance, but then she had met many maniacs in her time too, so he may just be a smart crazy, yet his question came from the blue, and in the riposte and parry of any interrogation the sharing was vital, and it was a reasonable question. All this was in her mind as she searched for an answer to the what some would have tout was obvious, but then it truly wasn't. "I always wanted to be a police woman, but when I started I had faith in the law, really believed in it, but slowly my faith was corroded, so often actually, that for a while I wasn't sure what I was doing, like the Dutch kid with his fingers in the dyke." Her prisoner smiled slightly and nodded, a frown of some in discernible kind flicked on his face. "For me it was drugs that motivated, well that and domestic violence, I saw many go that way, choose that life, saw my mother stand by a man who..." She silenced herself, looking at him, a stiffness crossed her face. "I wanted to make the world a better place but the world doesn't want to be any better than it is." She shrugged.

Turning she started the engine but suddenly saw the dog, Fawkes walked up and sat in front of the car, eyes searching the windows, she saw his reflection in the rear view mirror and nodded, reaching past him she opened the back door, the dog stumbled into the cramped space and rolled himself up next to the man. After a silent drive they reached the small local police station, she walked in, and being on her own Spanish territory, placed the maniac in his cell. Un cuffing his hands she looked at the two of them. The dog sniffed at the air unimpressed by his nasal discovery, but the man turned as the grilled and bar door shut. "It's not the world that doesn't want to be better than it is, it's the human world that is blinded to what it could be, and we both know it could be beautiful." Glancing at the floor she let out an almost girlish laugh, the he asked her a simpler question. "What's your name?"

Her teeth clucked and then her eyes flashed at his. "Maria, just Maria."

His outstretched hand reached through the bars, she took it and they shook hands. "Pleasure to meet you."

TERRO INTERO INTERROGATIONS

Somehow Maria had inherited Fawkes, she would've changed the name but the dog had accepted it, she nuzzled him as he was released from his cage at the airport, and in her occasionally emotive state about her illness she had grown to love her furry bodyguard, even if he did have a roving eye for the ladies of his species. It had happened quite naturally too, but whenever I get involved it always is. Steve had refused to speak to anyone but Maria, I had whispered in my viral way into the chief of Interpol's ears until she had become the lead officer, strangely the pay rise was nice, but she still drove her Bright red rusting car, she also seemed to be living out of it the same way she had before, yet now there was a dog basket in it. It was her fourth day at the ICC, and she drove from the quaint dog friendly hotel to the prison, but pulled in by the coffee shop having remembered his contempt for the prisons coffee. Then she drove through the maximum security gates and after a twenty minute security check, entered the prison proper. Fawkes wandered leash less behind her.

I knew that Zero was looking at ways of saving the almost catastrophic failure of the mission, and I lurked in the minds of many of the people's of 21, it's what I do, but a clear plan of action was required and although I do tamper and interfere in human affairs quite frequently, it was never at this level before, like re aligning the point of view of their inner realities so they could embrace a world with freedom attached to every move they made wasn't hard enough, no, these people had evolved psychologically around a system that made little sense. They had universally embraced a system that was unfair, brutal, and scary. Only here in 21 does economics equal slavery, and only here with the unparalleled levels of oppression does it operate like this. It's why profit comes before cures, it's why a drug can have its value increased by 5000% because the users need it and the profits are to be made. This approach of power pushed the buttons of those from Zero as they could never have thought it was logic to use water for productivity and not survival, but then they have a smaller population on Zero, half that of 21, and even their oceans are pristine, which considering Psycho Steve loved Marine Biology would have made him weep with joy to see it. He did weep happily when he finally does see it, but such was the battlefield.

I was used to the rhythms of Zeros mindsets, I was used to a paradisiacal image of the people of that world, whereas I had to adjust to the often paranoid and mutated lust hidden in every child's heart in 21. So my period of adjustment was helped by this pair of misfits, and Fawkes. I could alarm you and say the only one that made sense was the psycho capitalist killer, or the tired terminally ill police woman, but it's more alarming than that, the only one that made any sense to me on 21 was a sheepdog, better than that a rescued sheepdog, taken from an abusive and violent owner, and Fawkes loved being loved, he also liked regular feeding, walking and of course the ladies, but all in all he equally liked not being kicked and smashed about by some bum he couldn't escape from. In fact he was quite a happy dog, so I came to the conclusion that it was possible that on 21 you

needed a bit of a shock to your collective system, a shock that could wake you all up, make you appreciate every moment of peace that you have, like Fawkes the dog did.

Steve however appreciated seeing Fawkes and also the decent cup of coffee she came with, I felt his mind smile at the little things in life, and although the interrogation was an unusual format, when the person you are questioning has nothing to hide, well why not keep it warm and friendly. Even the hardened Interpol anti terrorist officer was disarmed by the warmth this killer projected, and he never dropped his guard but also found that the Hippie ritual of the questioning was a refreshing difference to his eyes, normally you would deconstruct the person, take them apart, offer something that they need, but when all they need is coffee and a sheepdog being looked after well. His son was harder to fathom than the killer was, yes Steve's son had come to the ICC, he had sat for three days demanding to see. "His Dad." Aloofly avoided the journalists questions and after meeting Maria he had made a visit, and immediately offered to look after the dog.

The two had a connection and the young man didn't even seem to be angry that his Dad had slaughtered a lot of the most influential people on the planet, and they had talked stuff, with nothing to do with the murders, when his dad suggested he do an interview to gets some "dosh together" the boy had shrugged and after an hour left with an appointment for the week after, the only alarming part was Steve's insistence that he wouldn't be there next week as he had a plan to escape before then. All of this was recorded, listened too, and the guard doubled. I had decided to help him escape, and he was at least an easy prisoner to his guards, when confronted by the question of his escape, he smiled, and put them at ease by stating. "I won't be hurting any of you." However he became stubbornly silent as to the methodology of his impending break out. So Maria sat alongside him asking him about his crimes, and he would ask her about her criminals, he knew something was physically wrong, but as she was about to leave he said. "You should go to see the invaders in Cyprus, as they have been performing medical miracles on the island lately."

She then filed her reports about the day, but I took his words and built them in her mind, created a need to go to Cyprus, her bosses ears came in for more of my whispering, and finally she was on a flight compete with dog for the first scene of the crime. The medicos of Zero knew she was coming, they at least hear me and talk with me, I am not a silent delusion to them, I am real, in your minds of madness on 21 my words become mere proof of madness, and such is your fear of insanity that you deny it exists in your own heart. So as my planning was working on a googolplex scale of interaction, I knew that Steve would escape with partial help from me, whilst I knew Maria would survive her problem, but as to my own awakening idea that you here on 21 would need a shock to the system. That became a simple mechanism, and one that only the medics of Zero could solve for you. Yes it was time for me to be a plague once more, it was time to strike 21 down.

ESCAPES, SUPER FLU'S AND MIRACLES IN A FRONTAL LOBE

Operation Russian roulette was coming along nicely in Steve's mind, it was to my viral point of view an eloquently simple escape plan, and he was happy knowing Maria would not be in the vicinity, although he was going to miss Fawkes. If only 21 was as simple or singular as this mad man was, then he couldn't have gotten away with a plan like this. Being due in the court later that day, he put his favourite smiley face baseball cap, slapped his jeans and smiled with warmth at the guards, it was genuine as he wished three of them no harm, but the fourth was a bit of a cold fish, a professional focused on a single task, nothing else, and that was a problem. Being a virus I helped Steve's plan along, and to his surprise he found the problematic and silent guard had been replaced

due to a pretty nasty stomach infection that I was, that was doing the rounds in in the prison. The cingulate complex in the human brain is as manipulable as the amygdala is, think about all of your emotions, all the stuff that lurks in your heads is impressive, and in the case of the human mind singularly enabling. Every decision you make is based upon an emotional matrix where the brain almost like a score card ranks and makes your decisions for you, and the brain also uses the very same emotions to pluck your memories from a combined holographic and organic entangled system. I would say more but here isn't the place for Brain science 101. No, all you need to know is that inducing a euphoric state in any of you upright walking monkey mammals is child's play for one such as me.

But as I said his plan was absurdly simple.

In short he was going to steal the armoured car and then play it by ear and see how far he could have gotten, I had wished I had spoken with him before this retarded bum rush for freedom, but I was beginning to realise how linear he could be too, and wanted to understand more of this man before I leapt into his frontal lobes. So at this juncture I stayed on the sidelines leaving him to his own devices, and if he had known that I was going to hack the eyes of the guards in advance it possibly wouldn't have been as much fun. Think about being invisible for a second, this was the chaos of his second and most inexplicable escape.

It started as all his escapes did with that smile, the new guard loved it, and smiled beatifically back at the maniac, the other guards did too, it was mildly unnerving for Steve but he went with the flow of it, the handcuffs were loosened as they connected upon his wrist, I had insisted that they were to tight and this nagging doubt in the happy guards mind had resulted in our hero having at least one free hand to play with, it was all he needed. The warden slowly as if under the influence of some pharmaceutical holiday actually hugged him in the court yard wishing him the best of luck in court, and for a moment I feared that psycho Steve's curiosity would get the better of him as he wondered how it would go, he had of course pleaded innocent of all charges, which was a point even the prosecutor found laughable, but for a fraction of a second he did think about going to the court room, needless to say he was going to defend himself, which with the many questions about his sanity was simply another legal dilemma, yet as he was walked to the truck that was when I felt a surge in his mind, a complete abandon to the insanity of the logical odds that opposed him.

I have tasted many human minds in my time but this was a roller coaster of logic, his thoughts raced through more options than I had thought possible, weapon free options I may add, I felt like I was moving at beyond light speed and very suddenly realised why he was so effective, I have tasted from bipolarity, and many other illnesses but this was simply a tactical genius at play. The solutions were creative too, none of which would have mattered as I was ready and able to assist, but he didn't need my help at all. Although he got it. Seriously if this guy had been born anywhere but 21 he would be ruling the place like the late great king Alfred did, by pure acuity and imaginative intelligence, but alas this was 21, and as all the hand guns present implied it was a brutal place to be born. Yet that rush of his thoughts caught me off guard as he triggered by circumstance went to work.

So suddenly did he move on his third option that I was taken aback at the grace of it, compartmentalised as it was he saw the gates wide open, did the math, and in a single precarious manoeuvre kicked the guard in the cherries and flowed cat like at the driver, snatching the keys from the poor woman's hand as he threw her from the door, she was laughing, in fact the entire

force in the courtyard was beaming at him, which was nuts from his view point but then you know more than he does at this point, so he slammed the armoured door shut and started to stumble with the engine. I was relieved to find he had a Achilles heel, it wasn't that he couldn't have been a good driver, but that he had never trusted cars at all, motorbikes, bicycles and he could fly a light plane, but he had all the driving prowess of a seven year old, so as the clutch fumbled and the armoured van lurched somewhat violently, the officers in the courtyard fell about laughing, but finally he got it to go in a straight line, and although wobbly he went through the wide open gates doubting his own insanity for the first time in his life as one of the guards there waved him goodbye, with an expansive smile and a wink. "What the hell is it with the Dutch?" He thought as the van very slowly wobbled precariously down the road, whilst he saw the men at the gate hugging each other in the rear view mirror, the psycho actually thought the establishment had changed sides.

As he passed a group of bicycles he decided to get out of the van, and still wearing the bright orange jump suit over his street clothing he stole one of them, apologising in his mind to the owner as he peddled away from the scene, the handcuffs attached to his land rattled against the handle bars. Imagine his shock when a phalanx of police cars shot by him oblivious to his presence, his confusion was a delicious vengeance to me, as he was unable to fathom anything that had just happened. So he just kept pedalling and putting as much distance between himself and the Hague as possible. Finally after about fifteen miles he stopped and placed the bike against a wall so he could take off the jumpsuit, and checking that his wallet was full, he went for a coffee, still convinced he would be caught any second he could at least enjoy the little things before hand.

Abstractly he had glanced at the huge shotgun in the van but then decided he wasn't in the mood for a shoot out, and finally walked with the stolen bike to the cafe. When he entered the waitress squealed with delight, pointing at his face in the television in the cafe, he smiled she smiled back and he asked for an Americano, then the two sat as she in broken English asked him how he pulled it off, never once was the woman afraid of the maniac, she even pointedly told him he had her support, which with breasts as eloquent as she had was a breath of fresh air. Police cars raced past the cafe with there sirens blaring away, at one point two of them walked in to warn the woman Christol of the dangerous escapee in the area, they smiled at Steve, he waved the handcuffs at them as he sipped his coffee with disbelief, they also mentioned a stolen bicycle and the maniac almost snapped, unaware that the officers were seeing a seven year old boy in a cafe, when one of them patted him on the head and said, "Your lucky to have an auntie like Christol." He started to giggle, so they left and the two of them sat blankly staring at the TV for a while.

The psycho liked the chatterbox of a woman, who felt he had struck a blow for everyone on the planet, her small son was lovely too, being comfortable he asked if he could use her cafe as a hide out as he planned his next move, she smiled and told him about only having one bed and as is usual with mammals I watched as procreation took over sanity and the two were particularly comfortable in each others company. Love, you guys cling to it like limpets, but at least you seem to enjoy the thrust of it all, besides I have lurked as STD's in my time, so my pride wasn't hurt too badly, but by morning as she opened the cafe I finally had him alone, and he was thinking of Maria. Like half the global constabulary are chasing him and the goof crazy maniac falls for a cop, so I could have chosen a cautious approach, but instead went full schizophrenic on him. To my surprise he took it in his stride and after a brief thought he said to the empty room.

"And just who the fuck are you?"

SHRINKING TUMOUROUS AFTER THOUGHTS.

As she came too from the procedure the medics from Zero had performed she thought of the maniac affectionately, his smile, his logic, and that disarming warmth he had, but then she found 47 messages on her mobile phone and hearing of his escape she exploded with something not unlike jealousy. "How dare he." Fawkes sat next to her bed, and placed his chin on her wrist, the guy hadn't even said goodbye, finally with some dizziness she stood and dressed, wondering if his escape as promised was some kind of invite, like fugitive dating, then she put her feelings down to having just had what would be major brain surgery in 21 but the Zero people had called it straight forwards, so she started to leave and had to explain that her lunatic had escaped and she had to recapture him before he caused a global revolution or something, the medic looked at her with confused humour and she left. Outside of the small field hospital she was prevented from getting in the rental car, and found herself being taken to a smallish flying machine, it flew several miles then landed a few hundred yard from a military check point. The woman pilot smiled and helped her get out then waved in a friendly manner to the guards.

The blue helmeted Australians wandered casually towards them, Austeyr rifles hung across their chest and slapped softly against their sides with each step. After a minute they were stood in front of the two women, one of them took off her helmet and smiled as she clipped it by the strap around her waist, short blonde hair fell in a curly mass and she propped maria up by her shoulders, as the other soldier barked softly spoken but unfamiliar English into the radio. "Another day another miracle luv, what do they do for you?"

Maria looked at the world from a selection of surreal angles, to find herself suddenly operating without the tumours influences was almost like discovering you had changed sex and colour overnight. So the disorientation was pretty severe, yet the friendly woman words had stung her from this sloppy reverie of recovery. "Brain tumour, I am the cop in charge of the maniac man hunt so I have to get out there and capture him again." It was noted in presses globally that "The Maniac." Was none other than our happy go lucky massed murderer that you know as Psycho Steve, so well known was he that the term had even become an affectionate one, his dual national status made him half Australian, and that made him a bushman, or bush whacker dependent upon your point of view.

"Christ you've met him." The soldier said softly, but with an air of admiration in her voice.

"I can't get him out of my head." Maria replied frowning, unable to voice her inner suspicion that her Mr Right could be a serial killing revolutionary known simply as the Maniac. "I have to catch him again, and you must not believe all that you read about him, he is very very disarming. But I have to bring him in." Her confusion at his escape and her cured status resulted in another anaesthetised frown. "Again."

I watched this exchange, enjoying the razors edge of its cruelty, imagine my surprise to find that this part time science fiction writing photojournalist was admired, Maria had not seen the global polls, one had asked the simplest question? Do you agree with his actions against the one percent. 77% had said yes, even worse was the fact that a further 18% were undecided, with only 5% against. Articles had been pumped out on him, his biography though often wrong was an amazing example of how short the distance between genius and insanity could be, a very large publisher was preparing to approach Maria for the rights to her book, a book Maria had no idea she was going to write, oblivious as she was to that fact she also had no idea of how popular the Maniac had become.

Friends and family, business colleagues, outright enemies of a personal type had erupted into the public consciousness, yet for all their eloquence his sons quote seems to say nothing and everything about it all. "Look my Dad is crazy but he is not insane."

The Australian looked at Maria and smiled gently as they walked to the UN jeep that had arrived. "You know they say he can shoot the nuts off a butterfly at 500 yards, so maybe you shouldn't hunt him down but keep your head down."

"Oh no, he would never shoot me." Her brows furrowed in chaotic evidence of her confusion at the thought of him shooting her. "Unless it was an accident, he respects me, likes me, I only came for the cure here at his insistence but I do not think he would shoot me."

The soldier scowled and then laughed as she did the seatbelt up in the Jeep. "Sounds to me like they have sent a maniac after a maniac." Maria waved them farewell but realised that she hadn't thanked her saviours as they drove away.

GLIMPSES OF A VIRAL PROPORTION.

Picture a wide open space, then fill it with electrical pathways flowing outwards from several masses hidden deep within it all. Glimpsing the true Gestalt that is a human mind is pretty dreamlike. Yet Psycho Steve's mind was such an expanse of open and playful logics, thought was a game to this mind, and as I connected with him I changed slightly too. Imagination is a gift, but as to where it comes from? Well. Let's just say I have never nailed that one down, it could be an emotional combination that when combined with memory becomes that which makes humans pretty unique, but I have no idea where it comes from, that is the greatest mystery of your often confusing species, but Steve, he had imagination in a quantity that could have sunk every ship that humanity had ever built, and suddenly I myself was catapulted into a mind that not only understood my nature but also my potential. Seriously, it was unfair, I am omnipotent and in your terms god like, but in the maniacs mind I met my match.

Humans have thrived through their often diverse practices and mind sets, for myself humanity is at its best and worse when it plays with the new to create something original, yet it is often encumbered by the past histories and experiences, and that is expressed in your species overall, like a social gestalt that when combined with your numbers and collective experiences and becomes an illusive but quite quantifiable pattern, in this argument the individual becomes almost a quantum signature, and then the overall species mimics its own mind by becoming a social system. Yet in the maniacs mind was an awareness of these patterns, he could see humanities wave like conformity, flowing like stardust, the mind had even created a system for evolution that was almost as advanced as Zeros sciences were. Almost. Yet he saw the causal conformity as a science, where others saw gods or moral ambiguities, his eyes generated an inevitability mechanism where thermodynamics and time collided as one thing creating a species that could only conform to the action and reaction mechanism of stardust and the greater universe. Lost briefly and navigating a very different brain I was surprised at many of the factors that had created it, self education is possibly as good as it gets for monkey mammals, and when I reached his memories, they burned like a horrific meteor strike. This man saw no long term future just the now, to realise that a child had been sent to one of societies establishments called schools, looked at it all, watched children climbing other peoples ladders and jumping their hoops, had resulted in a mild anger, because the child he had once been had wanted to build his own ladders, and jump his own hurdles. Yet that is also how he viewed his

new occupation as a maniac.

Action and reaction flowing almost simultaneously in an immeasurable system of motion, social and scientific, real and imagined had combined in his mind to place himself squarely as a force that could cause reactions to interconnect and after there collisions change things in the overall system. Like a ball rolling downhill the plan in his mind was a breathtaking mind scape of strategies combining with murder and nudges in a human liberation, and embarrassingly for me I was labelled a new and significant factor, in fact he had worked out what I was, how I could function and labelled me a neutral force that could be used. Normally when I view or scan a person there is a level of resistance involved, people like to keep their darknesses to themselves, but the Maniac opened up like a book in a Brothels waiting room, he hid nothing, was ashamed of nothing, because he was proud to be an upright walking monkey mammal and felt that little was wrong with following your instinctive wiring. I could say madmen lack any doubts, they are convinced of their sanity normally, but he knew he was a broken toy, and he also knew what had broken him. So in the depths of this person, where I should have found alienation, I found only humanity, humanity that had accepted that its own inner mechanisms were broken and that had also accepted a point of view.

He was less broken than the overall social mechanisms that dominated his world.

In that the Maniac was unique, because he thought that being broken meant he could become a repair for a far more damaged system, and his killings were his tools to manage this superimposed repair job on the whole of humanity, so he was nuts, but on scale of genius and beyond any meagre measurement of the googolplex. Whilst I for the first time ever found not adoration or fear, just acceptance of what I am, a virus.

THE INVISIBILITY OF MICROBES

I tend to work through absorption, so to find myself being absorbed by some monkey mammal was after many millennia a new one. The experience was not unpleasant and could be best summed up by the word conscription, so I became a part of his team, and even though I say so myself the great Russian secret agent known as Werter had nothing on me, but then he was only infiltrating the Nazi's command structure whereas I was dealing with intelligence gathering an entire planet. So as he went through the Tokyo custom point, I had hacked the perception of the locals, it's a trick really as people tend to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, so to SGT Wantanabe he saw a frail old lady whilst corporal Miho was admiring the surfer dude at a distance. Both of them were the Maniac, who walked calmly through the busy airport with two cowboy guns on his hips and a short sword across his shoulders. He strolled on through customs, and on to a Yakuza armoury, where the over tattoo'd gangsters saw their top enforcer and supplied him with a crazy selection of weapons, up to and including an M2 carbine with bayonet and an antique Lee Enfield sniper rifle from the first world war. Guns And Ammo did an article about his "Eclectic" taste in weaponry, so when he saw the M2 Tommy gun it was love at first sight.

The article was almost a subversive guide to assassination, complete with tips and advice on the better options that were now available, and considering the words Heckler and Koch came up a lot the writer was probably sponsored by them. Steve had not read it but if he had he may have laughed at the concept of using rational professional weapons to perform insanities like global assassinations. After many years behind the camera lens he could shoot any particular weapon with a speed and accuracy that was alarming, I have lurked in many a warrior in my time but there was a grace in the way he used the fire arms, he fired them like they were equations, he simply did the

maths and the rest was target interception. In another article titled "Mess With The Press Die Like The Rest," his skills were dissected by a fellow tog, which is an abbreviation of photographer. The conclusions that after thirty years behind the lenses anyone would find merely aiming and hitting a target child's play, were an eloquent understatement, yet adding thirty years of violent photo journalism to the mix could create an unstoppable superman of sorts, capable of overcoming any obstacle and dealing with the stresses involved in this type of life, alone. The tog had concluded that only a tog could work in the way the Maniac did. The one percent's glass castles also started to fracture slowly, cracks lurched in the reflections, like a shattered mirror that had been glued back together the articles flowed. Many attempted to reaffirm values, the morality of murder became a very populist form of article, murder being bad was the strength of these pieces as life was a gift. The Maniac had even replied to one of them online. His words had passed unnoticed for three weeks until one blogger stumbled upon them, the Maniac said.

"Life is a gift that we waste and take for granted, murder is generally a bad thing, but when millions starve, or break their backs under the oppression of economics, religion, or ideologies that are alien to life, which means the planet is being destroyed by the single word profit, then murder becomes a necessary tool of defence."

Yet the presses rolled off the words, the Internet became awash in revolution whilst the television spoke, yet slowly but surely the stories began to lose momentum, the Maniac although a popular fiction was replaced by more pressing issues, whilst the events in Tokyo were mentioned, they were buried deeper and deeper within the papers, with one exception, the Americans and The Russians agreed on something finally, that was almost his last front page day, that was when he was announced as the Ace Of Spades, and put on an official death list, yet bit by bit the plan began to work, his actions lead others to his conclusions. The ball started to roll against the tides and around the world people killed the leaders and the preachers and the financiers.

THE PENTHOUSE OF THE WARRIOR

The hedge funder sits truculently secure in his temple of gold, casting his gaze eastwards across the bustling city he is blind to the somber early evening light, oblivious to the fact that soon he will never feel the gift of this reflected beauty that surrounds him. The maniac glances up to the top floors of the building from the street below, the opulence of the foyer surprises him briefly, evidential of the men above hims criminal antics. Legal antics, his mind repeats the phrase and his thin lips curve into a smile. The guardians at the threshold of this palace of greed pay him no attention as he steps through the revolving door and in the mirrored floors he sees his own reflection, the Thompson and the sword etch there lines in his shadowed figure, the tennis shoes stand out in contrast to his weapons, yet the maniac stops gauging the lights intensities, then slowly closes his eyes as the rich light of the lowing sun glows with a sharp and warm intensity upon his retina.

The custodians of the passes pay him no heed as he rocks gently lost almost trance like in the luminous bathing of light that surrounds him. Then he walks through the metal detector, it squeals its alarm but to no avail, the men are not hearing the waves of sound. One of them is sitting with his eyes closed too and the Maniac smiles knowingly towards him as he too understands the strength of the light as it breaks gently though closed eyes. The lift smoothly arises over the floors and the man who is one of the most powerful upon this plain of existence stands in his office, watching over a city that he now mostly owns. Yet not as a benefactor, his eyes lust at the power he holds, the profits

of his medicines alone could break the rack of starvation that grips many upon the planet, the sales of his weapons could end any conflict, and the scale of this mans reach is truly and quite pitifully global. In a mind without morals he sits leaching the glowing light pondering his petroleum and energy sectors. Without much in his mind but this lust of controlling corruption he glances back to his desk, as the lift stops slowly, it's breaking mechanism causing a flutter in the stomach of the maniac. Yet the hedge funder blissfully lost in his dreams of diesel engines and in the duplicitous corrupt ability of the very mechanisms that would protect the people's from such emissions stalks towards his desk, lost in his calculus the man opens a drawer and looks at the figures that blur in ridiculous quantities upon the documents face. The lift door slides slowly open.

In the vast space of the reception the Maniac steps softly forwards, the lush worm finally sees him, her mind registers his face, she knows the face and she drops to the floor with an oh of surprise on her lips, her heel connects with the alarm button and visible to all the Maniac raises the Thompson. The suited security pull mini machine guns but one is cut down before his thumb can flip the safety of his weapon, the light glances from the mirrored wall as if to blind all with its gentility, yet the maniac fires again at the dragon like mercenary defender of this temple, the priestess scrambles back from the exchange of speeding metals, her memory tries to reassemble the reality, yet the man stands and advances firing, rigid in his muscle the guard almost casually approaches the aiming maniac, yet still distracted by the lack of creativity that is hidden within the opulent structures, he squirrels his body back behind a mirrored reflective pillar, for a moment the priestess of reception watches the security advance, her mind awash at his brashness in this sea of shattering glass.

Behind her in another office is an old guard this franchised world, he is a man of Japan, and as the shots ring out he looks at the monitors and see's the Maniac, watches the guard stopping to reload and smiles as the soldier of protection tumbles, alive but with his legs shattered, the executive watches, his is a mind that has risen, his is a mind of the team, his is a mind bored at the inhumanity of his own profits and in front of his eyes is the Maniac. Tradition, family, life and the world blur briefly flickering like a furnace in his eyes, the swords upon the shelving, briefly he thought of his grand father, he had died taking a city in a long lost war, but his swords had sat solidly waiting, waiting for this moment, his hands reach for them without hesitation, the metals slide effortlessly from the sheath as the blade fresh and pristinely lethal reflected the golden light of the dying sun, then he gazes at the screen.

The Maniac stalked calmly forwards, glass shattered at his feet crunched with the gravity of his movement, dropping the empty Thompson he drew a Blackhawk, dull and blue it's lever slid smoothly back as he walked into the smaller offices, there the hedge funder was stumbling, soft fleshy fingers grasped at the handle of the fire escape, almost empty in his head the Maniac glanced at him and turned, the fire escapes heavy door slid softly open and the man sobbed a breath, whilst the killer stared at his fears. Surrounded by all of this health and wealth he thought of all of the decisions the man had made. He pictured the seemingly infinite misery he had unleashed upon the people's unlucky enough to be poor, but the hedge funders eyes wiped themselves wide as they saw the mirrored reflected figure behind them, he turned slowly dry of mouth his lips attempted to frame words, his mind dulled by the certainty of it all froze and the Maniac lifted the revolver to aim, the creature stared with a calm at its victim as legs turned to rattling sticks the man of billions falls with stumbling heart to his knees, his chest hardens and the Maniac looks on with curious thought as a heart that is worth all this fails, stepping forwards the killer checks the pulse, knowing that the arresting heart is failing his victim a thin smile of ironic simplicity passes upon his lips. Then he turns to stalk back to the lobby. Silhouetted in the hedge funders dulling gaze, he turns his back

upon the now worthless and wretched example of his species, and slowly the fears collide as the man dies choking for his breath, he knows no value but one more lung full of air.

The Maniac step by step retraces his track, in one office the man of figures stared with bleak certainty at him but the Maniac passed him by. The pond was full of minnows, yet there was one more left, one worth the bullets price, and he found him standing in the crazed reflected world of confused glass, he stood solidly, the Katana faced the floor gripped by the light, whilst the gun should have fired the two stared watching the other briefly. The gilded woman hid behind the chairs, watching this silence. The Maniac silently looked at the gun, his mask faceless as he uncocked it and then spun it in his fingers to the holster. She saw his thumb curl some leather over the gun then she saw his smile. His eyes were alive with a challenged mirth as his hand slowly reached for the leaf sword.

Her eyes lurched from one to the other as the old man in his baggy suit faced the Maniac, she loved the old man, her heart was amazed at his strength as he gripped the sword, then with one word swiftly raced at the killer.

"Nanda!"

BLISSFULLY GLOBAL ONCE MORE

Maria stepped through the scene, the Maniac had been injured, but she stopped in the middle of the room looking at the blood drying upon the fragments around her professionally. Over a billion had seen the security footage mysteriously uploaded in its HD formats to YouTube, they had all seen the mans successful attack, this according to President Trump "was how executives die," she placed her laptop down on the floor and watched the video again. Strange emotions leapt from the scene as she watched it.

"Nanda."

The angles from the security cameras gave the scene a surreal effect, for some reason she thought of Resident Evil, as the old man Hiro leapt forwards she saw Steve slide sideways, rolling away to appear behind him, but the sword had made its mark as it has slashed through his cheeks, blood flows upon the blade and the Maniacs face, yet the smiles from both men are what stands out, locked they advance again. Maria wondered why he hadn't just shot him, she suppressed the emotions that hoped he was alright but with his teeth exposed the Maniacs sword connected with flesh in the next rush, Hiro stumbles, his thigh cut and his free hand falls heavily upon the broken glass, yet ignoring the injuries both men circle each other. The longer reach of the Katana catches the exposed shoulder of the Maniac, but in the same exchange of blades a sudden thrust from the brutal short sword cuts and pushes into the executives stomach, yet the video does not show you their thoughts. It can't but I as a virus can. So I showed Maria the thoughts too.

Hiro felt that thrust rip into him, but at the same moment was more alive than he had ever been, Steve however was neutral of thought, which is odd for a Maniac, yet in this fight was a calmness, as Hiro backed slowly away to recover, the Maniac slowed and waited. In a fight like this a minute is an eternity, yet the men stopped, one could have finished the other then and there, with one strike but they separated, and with locked eyes waited, the old man was gathering his strengths, whilst Steve was waiting, until he spoke, softly, almost casually.

"You only have to change your ways, evolve, say it is so and I will leave." Steve said simply, his voice flat and a gentle smile graced his bleeding face.

Hiro thought briefly, propping himself with sword, his words were spoken softly too, his death he accepted but his life had been lived, his mind slowly without fear formed his words. "No, we are yin and yang, black and white, north and south, you oppose all that I strive to create and exist for, in that there's respect, and with that respect is a duty, we will fight for I refuse to accept your insistence that there is a better option, I saw that as a child, bombed rubble, so we will always be opposing forces and we will always fight, this is not a negotiation, as chaos is all that you offer, and order is all I have."

Steve steps back, briefly he thinks of leaving the crazy old man, but of all of them he is the only one who ever fought back, this old man has stood his ground, he deserves what is on offer, death, but he doesn't deserve the heart attack like the other worm had, yet he does think he can walk away, but he knows that he cannot. Order, the words mixes surreal in its toxins as the maniac thinks it through, then he smiles and speaks. "I can respect that, what is your first name sir."

"Hiro." The Maniac smiles slowly then says. "Are you ready."

The old man nods, Steve nods back, and with a sudden speed Hiro thrusts out stepping sideways the Maniacs leg kicks out slamming the old man to the floor and with a cat like spring his sword is thrust with both hands into his neck. Stepping away leaving the sword in the dulling eyes he takes the old mans hand, and whispers "respect." waiting as his life left him.

Steve turns away finally seeing the woman, he smiles to her. "I am not here for you, relax, but bury him deep, he's the only one that has fought back." Maria's fingers grace the bleeding face as he turns to the lift, where he leans with weapons drawn waiting for the ground floor. The cameras show him casually stalk past the guards, the police and the firemen, all of whom fail to react to the Maniac, and Maria watched as he left down a street crowded with first responders and then got in a taxi, she points to him in the monitor. The tech see's a schoolgirl, whilst I having anticipated this I made sure they all saw a schoolgirl, being from Interpol the Japanese detective indulged her and let the tech follow the taxi using the slow but reliable CCTV network. He couldn't just come out and say he thought she was nuts, but when she requested back up, he almost burst out laughing. The carnage was nothing new to his eyes, having solved more than a few Yakuza killings in his time, but with a shrug he gave her a SWAT team, whilst phoning his superiors about the out of control euro crazy copper.

It went down like this. The Maniacs picture was run by the swat team, they memorised it, then with an efficiency worthy of Ancient Rome, they secured the perimeter and isolated the lush hotel. One by one undercover officers infiltrated the hotel, and one by one the staff when shown the photo saw the schoolgirl in the penthouse suite. In a floor by floor operation the hotel was evacuated, many of the rich and famous guests were escorted in various states of undress from the building, while the press watched on, in a blissfully summer haze of light the cameras shot the pictures. The ambassador from the republic of Bamboozle was there in his underwear, whilst couple of B listers spoke of their terror to be caught up in such a drama, whilst one reclusive writer hid under his

jacket and ran from the overall scene barefoot. Like a rampaging circus of tech the cameras and media arrived almost causing more congestion than the police did.

In the lobby Maria watched as the floors were cleared, then after what seemed like years she was going up in the lift, and stepping out on the floor beneath she very quietly went up the stairwell that was so full of police commandos that she was forced to breath in half the time. I felt the mirth from the Maniac, he was sat playing world of tanks on the suites Xbox, and when the techs drilled and patiently threaded the camera into the wall, then they saw the small seven year old girl playing a tank game and laughing, she swore a lot but that seemed normal for anyone related to president Trump, which is what the hotel records said, but then again if she wasn't the maniac, she was probably helping him. In fact one of the techs was checking the accounts in the game seeking an ISP for the maniac.

Finally and without taking any chances the door was blown open by the assault team, who it seems we're also sponsored by Heckler and Koch, and the six of them stormed the room throwing a flash bang, the moment the commandos saw the child writhing in the floor with a bleeding nose they immediately regretted using the banger, the medic rushed in in front of Maria who with her magnum drawn followed them all in. She had thought of what to say and with a smile she said. "Aha! We meet again Maniac!" Steve was sat on the bed holding his nose and he smiled to her. "What has the cat got your tongue, did you think I couldn't catch up with you?" His smile broadened as the SWAT team looked at her, one of them took a gas mask off and began to swear in Japanese, whilst the others stared at the small child then back at the foreigner. She asked for them to disarm him, but one merely laughed with an anxious chuckle whilst his commander shrugged. You and I both know they saw no weapons, but Maria began to swear in Spanish and took the two cowboy guns out of there holster, the swat team saw a pair of bananas, and Maria demanded they cuff him.

In a daze of casual relief she escorted the silent Maniac to the awaiting car, in silence the small procession of vehicles sped to the main police station, and in silence they arrived at the cell like interrogation room. Where the Maniac uttered his first words.

"How's Fawks?"

"Let me get this strait you just blitz killed the seventh richest man on the planet and you ask me about the dog?" She said with raised eyebrows and a tone of exasperation.

"I won't talk until you tell me how Fawks is?"

The Japanese detective heard him talking, but he heard a child muttering about a high score and how she had been prevented from acing a Convenanter tank, he googled it on his smart phone as Maria interrogated further. "Fawkes is fine apart for the fact that he knocked up the Gonzales chihuahua." Her brows furrowed deeply as she spoke. "Somehow, I mean its a fraction of his size, how? It's beyond me." She shook her head to clear it of canine distraction. "But he is fine."

"It's an impressive riddle actually, but then he is smart dog and obviously likes a challenging puzzle." The Maniac said disarmingly, whilst the Japanese detective decided to try building some rap pour with the child and said.

"Its a very cute little tank I can see what you want to ace it." Maria turned and looked at him sharply. The man smiled to her and showed her a glowing picture of a somewhat harmless looking tank. She stared at him.

"Well if the telly tubbies ever go to war then that's the machine for them." Steve said smiling at Maria's confusion.

"Ahh." Said the Japanese detective sensing an opening in the conversation, he was thinking about getting the child to talk, and getting the Maniacs location from her. "So you like the Telly Tubbies?"

"No way the Telly Tubbies are so last decade, but Pinghu is timeless, in fact Pinghu is happening, he's actually got his finger on the social pulse of all under tens."

"Ahh so you like penguins, we have a lot of them in the Tokyo zoo you know, would you like to see them."

Maria stared at the man, brows furrowed, unable as she was to re-translate or even understand the oddities of this technique. "What the."

Steve smiled to her, it pissed her off, she looked at the detective and asked him. "What the hell has a penguin got to do with any of this?" Steve interrupted and asked for one of his bananas, so the man left the room quickly. "What the hell, bananas, penguins what is going on here?" When the man returned he handed the Blackhawks to Steve, Maria watched it like it was in slow motion, and Steve smiled at her. She stepped forwards and snatched the banana/gun from his hands. "Not going to happen." That was the last thing she got to say.

Blessed be my viral trap doors, one such trap has just opened beneath Maria's feet. Where she sees the Maniac, everyone else sees a seven year old girl, they don't even hear what he is actually saying either. Maria does though, and when she snatched the banana from the small child that was too much for the detective next to her, as he forcibly lifted her from her chair and escorted her from the room. I felt her confusion at the lack of sanity she was seeing, the last thing she saw as she left the room was the Maniac spinning a cowboy gun, he smiled at her too.

BRAINLESS IN SEATTLE

A couple of weeks later the little anthropologist found herself in Seattle knocking upon a door, the Maniac opened it and smiled at her. Maria was sat sullenly in the car but Fawkes started to bounce up and down so she opened the door and he raced at the house. Having just flown in from her fourteenth psych evaluation in a fortnight, she was in no mood for any of this, even though her career was in tatters she had to admit that her downfall paled in comparison to the political fallout that was now going down in Tokyo. Having arrested Lady Penelope Trumpelle, who according to the records was a minor British royal and a distant relative several times removed from President Trump, Maria sighed and almost punched the rental cars dash board. At least her face wasn't in any of the newspapers she had read on the flight here, that was a small relief, but as the child had effectively disappeared off the face of the Earth, there was now a massive police effort going on globally to find her, and Maria turned to look at the brightly coloured small house that the Maniac was now lurking in, bitterly she thought of her commanders words, words that told her she would be lucky to get a job as a toilet attendant, yet to protect Interpol, the words publicly were those of a

breakdown, a detective who had broken under pressure, she cursed the house in front of her, and with a fluid tongue exploded in vented anger with a lot of rather flavourful Spanish, that wouldn't fit in a book of this size. Yet the world was searching for Lady Penelope, and her own people were trying to prove she was loco, and it was all his fault. She frowned deeply, and then checked that her revolver was loaded, and with a single thought stepped from the car, it was raining, but the thought was this. "Even Fawkes had abandoned her."

Putting aside the spitting and venomous hatred that she felt at this point, inside the house a very different conversation was happening. Courtesy of my silence both here and in Zero, the Maniac had somehow become the centre of an energised whirlwind of human social psychology. Rain pattered upon the roof noisily as a woman looking at her mobile phone speed walked almost dragging a small boy, presumably her child, past the house, Maria paused, hearing the anthropologists raised voice, shouting. It made her smile with a cat like cruelty, even the enlightened were being driven nuts by him. When she heard his calm flat tone she stiffened physically, as he spoke. "Look it will all make sense in Sweden." Maria could even picture the disarming shrug that would accompany those nonsensical words of his. So she sat on the porch chair and listened as the cat like screech of high speed Zeronian exploded with more anger than she could have thought possible from the enlivened and enlightened reality, and her smile broadened.

The door opened and a large set man stepped out, in good English he introduced himself as Neoklis, then the two sat silently listening to the argument, Fawkes's claws scratched at door and the man opened it, he trotted to Maria and in a fit of canine clumsiness sat haphazardly on her lap. The door was opened violently and the little anthropologist stepped out at a speed that made her blur to Maria's eyes, her eyes burned like a fury and were matched by a pink flush upon her cheeks. When she reached into the canvas shoulder bag and produced a packet of Camels Maria let out a short gasp of surprise, the woman from Zero looked at her as she lit one of the cancerous sticks and let forth a burst of high speed squealing words that if she had been in doors would have shattered her ear drums. Softly from inside the house Bob Marley began to sing about being Iron like a lion in Zion. Muffled as the sound was Neoklis began to hum next to her, he smiled and said slowly.

"At least he has stopped playing Tove Styrkes Borderline, seriously it was beginning to drive me nuts." He paused obviously in thought. "But then again he is nuts." A frown criss crossed his lined face as he said that, then added. "Isn't he?"

"Only a raving lunatic could believe that an individual could make a difference in today's society." Maria said sharply whilst looking at the anthropologist, the woman shrugged. "I didn't know you smoked in Zero?"

She pulled the clockwork speaker from her bag and after a brief struggle with the other contents she placed it upon the railings she was leaning on. "We don't! I started after I met your bankers." Maria laughed nervously when this beautifical woman almost from a fantasy movie went cross eyed at her. "Seriously what is wrong with you people here, I mean this, who in their right mind could take a concept as gorgeous as democracy and mutate it into a limited choice between urine or poop, who? Yet that is exactly what you have done, and that's before I talk about your economic system, sheeeit, that could make Genghis Khan freaking weep, makes me freaking weep every time I think of it." She sucked on the cigarette and her hands waved around her. "Seriously who in their right minds would dream up a system that guarantees the majority won't benefit from it, who would fucking well come up with that, and creating an entire level of unsustainable industry whilst your at

it, seriously your lot invented bullets before you had any effective birth control and it's, beginning to get to me, so pardon me for fucking smoking, but I would rather we left you to your inevitable extinction here in this reality as you are all fucking nuts."

She slumped against the railing and then exhaled, the smoke curled about her face chaotically, from within the house the Baha Men came on, and she started to bounce her head to the tune about escaping canines. She spoke as she danced her hips swivelling with an impossible speed for anyone in 21. "I have to give it to you for your music, that's gravy but it's not why I am here, I." She froze her eyes locked onto Maria's as her hips and legs flowed. "No I am here because our virus has gone quiet, stopped talking to all of us in Zero, and I have to get him to get Vee to talk with us all again, Vee won't talk until he has finished his business with your Maniac." She dropped the but of her cigarette and let out a gasping laugh of exasperation. "Oh no Jeanette can fix it, why? I don't know, but I am here because your Maniac has got a fan, our Vee, not yours but ours, and he won't even talk to me here." She kicked the sodden wood of the railing, and it shattered, then with a guilty expressions she said. "Sorry." The palm of her hands were outstretched to the damaged wood. "Why is everything so fragile here?" She slid to the floor and sat cupping her face with her hands. "I need a fucking whiskey."

I had been finding myself rather over stretched, exploring yet another reality had become an obsession, seriously I have explored many biological wildernesses throughout the multiverse, but even the Komodo dragons of 7 cannot compete with the utter insanity that is 21, with it's many chaotic psychological stratum, even the killer whales here are dumbed down, so it is worth pointing out that I had for the first time ever been forced to focus on one reality. It doesn't matter which reality you are in when you read this, as I shall attempt to get it published in all of them, but the chaos of my departure and from Zeros point of view my all engulfing silence was a bi product of my need to fully understand the mechanics of this deranged and aloof reality. There is even now many years after these events a sense of betrayal about my adoption of the Maniac, but sadly even though I believe he is one of the few shining examples of human sanity beyond Zero, even Jeanette doesn't share that point of view. As Jeanette was unloading her frustrations on Maria, the Maniac had gone to visit one of Thomas Crappers marvellous inventions, yet even here in 21 it is not as comfy as a toilet in Zero, so he heard what was said as he was dropping logs and smiled inwardly to himself at her frustrations.

Throughout your species history you have dropped them, picture your hunter gathering ancestors, all the wild life that was out to eat them, and then see them pooping in the woods with their eyes on stalks, it would be instantly recognisable to any generation of humans that has followed, technological man still poops even in Zero. In 3 they joke that even the poop smells sweeter in Zero, I know this is false, as it smells sharper, actually it would make a peasant from 21 run in terror, yet humanity has many recognisable traits in every reality, poop is just one of them. Even your space program's have to take it into account, in 21 it was Chuck Yeager who was the first man on the moon, would it bother you to find out he was wearing a nappy, does it lessen his achievement, yet the first wizz on the moon was taken by his colleague Buzz Aldrin, and that in itself is an achievement for all you monkey mammals. If you look to 3, it was the great Augustus Featherstone, he flew to the moon solo, and achieved both landmarks. Oddly both places landed in roughly the same spot, the sea of tranquility, yes only in the vacuum of space could a totally secure poop be achieved. As he sat there Steve who is half Australian was convinced a spider was going to bite his bum as a rat swam up the plumbing pipes. As irrational as those fears seem, it does connect modern man with his ancestors beautifully.

So as he flushed he decided to intervene on Zeros behalf, he asked me to make an announcement,

seriously he was washing his hands as he did this, and he said aloud, so Jeanette could hear him. "Vee dude fella, just send em all a quick message, you know a normal service will be resumed a soon as possible kinda thing. Please and pretty please with a cherry on top mate." Even a virus like me finds the Australian habit of adding mate to everything charming and quite disarming, in fact even in Zero the Aussies do this with me all the time, and it does work, I am more likely to respond to it. Which is weird but it is what it is. Maria was sharing a bottle of some kind of alcohol with Jeanette as she heard this, and both women lauded as the drains guzzled with the still flushing remains of yesterday's meal. Although as usual none of the Europeans were very impressed by American plumbing. So I thought it through, and then literally told them I would be back as I prepared to connect with every single human in four verses.

Maria felt my absence first and belched with surprise but that may have been the Zeronian Meade, Steve hovered on the staircase alone for the first time in ages and smiled, whilst Jeanette felt me in her mind, and I prepared her for use a conduit, like some long lost lover materialising from out of the blue, her mind bombarded me with questions, and I answered many in the blink of an eye, it wasn't that Jeanette had missed me, it wasn't as simple an emotion as that, this was the first time in her life that I had not been present. Imagine having a constant guardian abandon you, I had never realised the level of pain this would cause, and suddenly I was in her mind again. Whilst Steve turned up the volume on his mp3 player and Rickie Lee Jones played out Woodie and Dutch on slow train to Peking.

THE SHERMAN TANK, THE TEAM, AND THE NOT SO CUNNING MAN.

The team had formed frostily, my message had been received, as Neoklis was parking a stolen Sherman tank in front of the house, to everyone else it looked like a Camper van, Jeanette was joining them, and Maria was argumentatively opposing the Maniacs next move. Fawkes was doing a recon of the site, and the men of Mexxon didn't have a clue what was about to hit them. Nor did anyone fully understand my own role in the entire attack, I was going to erase them from human memory. Like zing blink and they have gone. Maria wasn't amused to find herself in the middle of a murderous assault, the tank seemed unnecessary, it also seemed a bit out of date, she looked it up on google, apparently it was one of the worse options of the second world war, they blew up a lot, and considering the hypnotised museum curator had been in a position to give them a huge panzer or much newer tanks, Steve had insisted on the Sherman and the other tank. There was nothing really online about the other tank, a Cromwell, but it seemed better than the Sherman Easy Eight was. Steve pulled up the Cromwell behind the Sherman, the passing people saw a bright red flat bed van. With every assembled piece of the puzzle Maria was choking back severe fear.

Steve was worried about Fawkes, and demanding regular updates from me, even Jeanette was concerned that this was a lot of responsibility for a Collie dog, even with my own involvement, although Fawkes was trotting around the office invisibly, he was still prone to the usual canine vices, including a particularly attractive Alsatian. Jeanette was sat on the porch looking at the two tanks, there was nothing like them on Zero, but even by 3's standards they were pretty aggressive, and she was waiting for her military advisor to arrive. When she heard the car horn tooting out "God save the King." Jeanette looked up to the street to see a Land Rover painted ridiculously with the Union Jack all over it. Her twin stepped swiftly from the car and laughed. There was something about 3 and the Union Jack that was indivisible, another Steve twin stepped from the passenger seat, on his shoulder was the Australian flag, he was also wearing a slouch hat and with Tshirt that read "Keep Calm and tend your barbie." The overall effect looked ridiculous. Briefly she pondered

about her doppelgänger here in 21, locked up in a Bavarian mental asylum, the poor woman had actually dated Steve, she looked at the hallway wondering if he was a psychosis machine or something weirder, and she knew when all this was over she had a trip to Bavaria with the cure for the woman's condition, but right now she had other priorities.

The two empiricists from 3 were oohing and ahhing over the Cromwell tank, named after the psychotic cavalry man of some long forgotten civil war, so Jeanette glanced at the reply to her latest report, it seemed that even her husband was worried she had gone "Native." In fact she was worried she had, but then again if she needed to get a brain graft after this little excursion well it was worth it. Vee had spent several minutes telling the Zeronian council how it was, but Jeanette being the only human in the chain was getting it in the neck. Nobody understood the necessity of a fatal dynamic in Zero, and even to her the concept was insane, but this was according to Vee at least an act of liberation, her thoughts were halted by her double springing up the small set of steps and gracefully landing by her side on the swinging sofa she was sat on.

"Well ain't chance a fine thing my lovely." Jeanette looked at her blankly, knowing that a lot of the conversation on 3 didn't actually mean anything at all she waited for more. I was in their minds as they sat down that day, the man from 3 was suppressing his fantasy, as did most men when they encountered the reality of multiple dimensions, don't judge him too harshly as he loved his woman but just couldn't get the idea of a bedroom full of Jeanette's out of his mind, the funny thing is that the women had the same fantasy, all of them gay, straight or bi had the same sexualised thought, but none of them have ever voiced it, except in sports, it has rarely happened, the woman who was Jeanette's twin and name sake, was thinking of the plan, she had never before thought of using live ammunition on people and it did deeply bother her, but with an air of confidence that she was deliberately projecting you would not have realised that. Finally she slapped her hands together.

"Ok, take me to your Maniac."

"Can't."The little anthropologist responded with a shrug. "We are waiting for another Steve."

"Which one now?" "The photographer from 20."

Rain ponderously began to fall, like many things in 21 it took a while for it to make its mind up and settle, so the group sat silently listening to the pattering from the roof and the listless music that emerged from the walls behind them. Finally a silver haired man on a bicycle showed up, chaining the green racing bike up on the fence the man walked through the gate emanating a chaotic air about him, hair flew in opposite directions to the wind and even the way he walked seemed casually aggressive, his hand struggled inside of a largish shoulder bag, finally pulling a large DSLR camera from it, and upon reaching the steps that they were sat upon he smiled disarmingly up to them.

"Hiyah I'm Steve." He said adding a hippie piece sign with his fingers. Jeanette looked at the mis matched but clean clothing he was wearing, and Enya started to sing about sailing away from behind her. So far she had met seven different Steve's, married one of them, but all of them shared an aloof streak, it wasn't a psychological distancing mechanism but a genuine difference, none of them thought in the same way as the people around them, the difference of thought made for a difference of personality. The Steve in front of her was genuinely quite warm and friendly, surprisingly open considering the world he had been born into, but at the same time there was a

friction to his friendliness, and as she thought about this natural aloofness she couldn't help but smile back to him. Finally after a short amount of hand shaking he asked her. "Ok why the hell am I here, I mean how often does the Hackney Gazettes tog get invited to another universe by some bleeding hush hush people at Scotland freaking Yard?" He pulled a face as he said that. "So why am I here and more alarmingly how come there are so few cyclists here?"

Twenty by all counts was a weird place, London there was more like Peking in the twenties, horses and cyclists jockeyed upon the streets alongside rickshaws and tram carriages,whilst the internal combustion engine had not really taken off like it had in almost every other universe that had been explored, they even had airships that slowly plodded across the oceans, yet their medicine was very advanced and they had adapted to the computer with an incredible lust. The differences didn't end there, for instance the Nikon camera firm plays a massive role everywhere, in this guys world they had Olympus, Linhof and Yashica, but then they hadn't got Nikon, Strawberry or the coca cola corporation either, in fact there were no corporations there, communes yes, but corporates, no. Having researched him briefly Jeanette knew he used the Olympus but unlike some worlds they were not that flustered by the number of pixels a camera could generate, the E2 camera with its 11-22mm lens was sharper than anything yet produced anywhere in the multiverse, but it only had a ten million pixel sensor, she also spotted the small clockwork link of digital rangefinder camera that dangled like jewellery around his neck. It works like this, manual lens focus, manual exposure, no digital display other than a very basic light meter in the finder, no preview, but after you take a shot with it, the wind on nob powers the next shot all stored on a memory card, the design is very popular in twenty, and as basic as some parts of his world are, in many other ways they are one of the few lesser universes that can compete with Zero.

Jeanette sighed, looking at the man. "Your here to talk to another Steve, you deliberately have not been told anything about it so that you can reach your conclusions and advise us what to do." The Jeanette from three squealed with a girlish glee.

"Finally zero has had to get help elsewhere...." She said leaping to her feet with a howl of delight.

THE MEETING OF MANY MINDS WITH ONE PROBLEM. 21?

The two men had been sat quietly talking, the Maniac was animatedly pointing and gesticulating with every word he uttered, whilst the other Steve sat flatly listening and taking an occasional portrait. Finally Steve 20 spoke and although his voice was calm it had a strange authority to it that caught everyone's attention. "Honestly, you have no cameras on you, as a photographer you have not even showed the remotest curiosity for the equipment I am using which is from a parallel universe." He sat back in the chair as he spoke, then rubbed his hand over his lips repeatedly. "This lack of curiosity means that you have lost your curiosity, and for me curiosity is everything." The two men locked eyes, the killer and the artist spawned together in silent thought and argument, finally he continued speaking. "Obviously I am a novice in this reality you all call 21, but it strikes me that if you are right you may be killing the wrong people, in fact I am almost certain of it, the men of commerce here are lost in the dreams of profits, nothing but profits, the entire system is fuelling itself using this force you call economics, which as you have pointed out is not real, am I correct so far?"

The Maniac nodded, then leant forward gazing at the floor, the little anthropologist sat listening slightly stunned at the Maniacs silence, whilst Jeanette from 3 sipped at her coffee, as the room

quietly focused on the words that were being spoken.

"This global warming thing for instance, we know of it as a theory in 20, we understood the science of it and although we use fossil fuels for the plastics, we are also very cautious of how we use materials, it's why our photographers abandoned the film process and embraced the cleaner digitised one, but we kept the manual thing going too." He passed over the clockwork camera and the Maniac looked at it almost like dumb animal would when it encountered a helicopter. "That works mechanically, it's environment friendly too, I control it not the other way round, and here when I looked in a camera shop it's all automatics, your cars are too, everywhere as if you have forgotten how to exercise or how important it is, in fact your world seems to be obsessed with crutches, aids to help you retreat from your life. I for instance like dish washing, I could get a dish washer, my wife could insist on it, but it's nice for us to chat as we wash after we have eaten, many of our appliances for instance involve more input, but then we like the inputting, here everything is about doing less, which for an organic mammal strikes me as nuts, and I am sure you are killing the wrong crowd."

Jeanette stood up, her military organised mind knew what he was talking about, and being from 3 she couldn't keep her mouth closed so she spoke. "Ok he makes sense but who should he kill?" The little anthropologist sat bolt upright shocked at the reality behind her question.

"Well when a problem is that everyone has embraced a cuckoo land concept, like this economics thingy, then it strikes me that killing the political's, the professional politicians makes much more sense, but at the same time you have to give people a better option, it's like the dish washer, is it nicer to chat and clean or is it just a matter of convenience? Although I really have to research more about this place because I have only been here for 7 hours so can't claim any expertise about it at all."

"But the political's were voted for weren't they? So killing them would be like killing everyone, the soldier Steve announced with a practiced military authority.

"Oh fuck a duck." The photographer replied, on the orientation thingy when I was coming here I looked up the democracy concept not the Zero interpretation but the 21 meaning, it has no definition, it's at best some kind of gestalt but a very deceptive one. Here in 21 they recognise some important components of it as a process but the rest like any undefined system is up to the collective imaginations. It's tra la la land to use Zeros perspective to comprehend this, as we all know how we would immediately work out a thorough definition for any important process, whereas here it has been left deliberately vague, because vague is manipulable." He smiled fiddling with his camera, framing a picture, the Maniac was in the foreground with the collection of dopel twins behind him.

"You know what Zero has failed to do is understand the mess here, much of it deliberate, and if the Maniac, which you truly are my friend." He smiled to the Maniac warmly, his reflection just nodded. "Well if he is to succeed here, you have to adapt to the concept of broken systems being attacked by a broken man, and that is where we now find ourselves, and believe it or not the people here understand the language, the weaponry and the Maniac. You however do not even understand the insane reflection you have wandered into." The camera clicked as he spoke, the. He pulled a tablet device from his bag and connected the little camera to it.

As if from a long distance the thought perambulates to the Maniacs lips, he aware of the mans points finally asks. "Is that one an Olympus?"

"Oh finally the distant memory awakens in you, you who have forgotten what you are in this fight of fights, I do not know journalism here, maybe it is all rhetorical like it is in 3, or maybe like the poets of Zero, but the photographers, well we play in the reality, you like me are a photojournalist, you are not judgement, you belong in the motion of the real, light and motion, action and reaction, and as if by cresting that wave of emergent time, we as a profession are the surfers of reality. Like me you chose reality, not the fantasy of fashion or celebrity but the reality of humanity, because in reality is the razor of beauty, and what of your wars here, I have covered wars in my world, horror and beauty mix to create the images that evolve social thought and actions, actions that I have no wish to manipulate whilst you, the dimmest of spectres fight tooth and claw railing against an insane world and the crazies that live here, you fight like a broken toy against this systemised cruelty, but at heart you have forgotten that those who live in the real cannot be the judges of it, like physics an external observer must be the judge, not those entangled with the events happening around them." He paused and sipped at his coffee, the Maniac silently absorbed his words.

"Ultimately you are fighting because you have been dealing with a one sided fight your whole life, and you are killing the right people but need to evolve that to include others, but from what I can see you are fighting because of rage, nothing more and that is your burden, not mine, you see I love light, and you I think hate it." Finally the man from 20 smiled, and turned the tablet so all could see the photo. "I think I will call that the plotters." Then he slapped his knee and laughed. "Life is far to short to take it this seriously."

"You won't have heard of Major Tom here will you?" In truth Bowie had only reached 9 of the collected universes, in Zero he worked as a fireman, but he had never reached 21 either, or 3, as 20 Steve spoke two of the Steves frowned. "Major Tom was the first human to reach the moon in my world, she did that solo as well, became a global heroine, she is from a spot called Manly in Australia, and in my world we have a global commonwealth without the UN brigades you guys all seem to have. My point is that it works, whether it's an earthquake or a bush war, the Commonwealth saves lives, and that's the bigger difference between our worlds, here life is a commodity whereas at home life is everything." He shrugged and pulled another camera from his bag. "And for the records I am coming with you on this attack, unarmed, with nothing but these cameras, which is for me normality, reality, and my own code of life, and that's another thing you have forgotten."

ANY GOOD PLAN WILL FALL TO PIECES THE MOMENT YOU START

The Maniac looked at the castle in front of him, light reflected from the grey dull of the building, sharply arcing in contrast from the white paint that scattered the particles to his eyes, and with a thrust of his feet on both shoulders the Sherman lurched forwards and began to rumble squeakily towards this bunker of commerce and profitable bliss. Maria sighted through the binocular lenses and even before they had entered the compound she fired a 76mm high explosive shell at the guards station, the building didn't explode with a graphic visual, it kind of crumpled and collapsed in on itself, the Maniac laughed darkly, and then flipped on the recorder and Twisted Sister banged out from the loud speakers on the side of the antique tank. "We're not gonna take it." climbing to the turret hatch his fingers gripped upon the fifty calibre Browning machine gun and with its shells hurling themselves from the mechanism he disintegrated the entrance, aware as he was at the decapitations in front of him as the huge speeding metals hit flesh, men and women ran screaming whilst others stood dumbstruck with shock dripping from every skin pore in there corpulent soft bodies.

Steve from 20 framed the shot from behind him, the almost silhouetted assassin was on this sunny day as sharp as the spinning fatalities ahead of him, suddenly he panned the camera to his left and zooming in he fired the camera as the smaller Cromwell smashed through the brick wall, spewing a confusion of dust and rubble around itself, a woman jumping to the side would be blurring with a mammalian grace in the frame, it was at that point that he had to dive back inside the Sherman as it ploughed effortlessly into the massive reception area, another high explosive shell ripped through the corridor and Maria giggled with anxiety and confused emotions, the photographer leapt from the tank and raced to a nearby staircase, one of his cameras smashed against the floor as he stumbled in the dust and rubble, then with a articulate mobility he climbed and shot a Hollywood moment as the Easy Eight Sherman blazed away in the rubble of what had been a slick operation of powerful corporate imagery, and it was at this moment that I as a virus played my hand, as three pistol armed guards began to open fire at the tank and it's occupants, as the Cromwell skewed its path outside spraying death at the surviving guards and employees, as a single mother called Rachel was caught in the crossfire, falling and cut to pieces by the shrapnel of it all, that very moment I went to work.

In stock exchanges around the world men and women, much like Rachel were like somnambulist sleepwalkers erasing hundreds of billions worth of stocks, in others parts hackers were at work eradicating any reference to Mexxon, in obscure countries engineers and accountants laid down there tool and left for home, like hypnotised sheep they walked away, whilst I like a puppeteer handled the strings of this massive migration away from one huge super corporation. The local police were aware of the massive volume of gunfire, but could not have pin pointed its origin, as I had erased it from the map, and also from the collective consciousness, all that as Rachel tumbled to the ground torn apart like a rag doll, her child played at a kindergarten oblivious to his status as an orphan, as one stockbroker absently almost vacantly dropped a billion bills into Rachel's account, and I seeing all this felt an odd pang of regret, regret that even I cannot bring back the dead. Or can I?

At the point when I formatted the idea, the Maniac was leaping from the tank, the photographer shot the moment from a low angle, with corpses at his feet the Maniac alight with vacant directionless rage started to fire a tommy gun at the guards, Maria emerged from the turret and with a few shots from her Italian SMG dropped one of the guards, as soon as the tank had emptied Neoklis reversed it, and then started to ram at the walls of the huge building. The Maniac stepped over the injured and the dead, he raced oblivious to the blood sticking under his feet, aware of all the blood that dripped with the melancholy of profits in this corporation he bounded up the staircase towards the fiscal commanders, the higher he went the more carnage he unleashed, on the second floor he threw a grenade into a cubicle room, tearing apart the many salesmen and women there, on the third a quick burst tore into the engineering directors, leaving two dead and several wounded he proceeded up the floors, with little resistance on the way. To the photographer and the ex cop behind him there was no doubt that this was murder, pausing in the accounts offices the photographer took a picture of a picture, a family portrait of smiles smashed on the floor covered and surrounded by clotting blood and shattered glass. Yet still the Maniac went on.

Mechanically Maria recognised the way the two men moved, but the outcomes were very different, where the Maniac was exposing himself to inflict a violent action upon anyone who was in his path, the photographer was moving to frame a picture, both men moved like squirrels and also seemed to have eyes in the back of their heads, but one screamed with an animals rage whilst the other was silent, she obviously heard the gunshots, but only occasionally picked up on the cameras shutter

firing. In both 20 and 21 the Vietnam War had been fought, the Americans withdrew in both places, but in 20 the British commonwealth stayed put and held its ground, both men were children of that war, but one had gotten out in 1975 whilst the other had seen that violent odyssey end in 1981. I point that out as the carnage rose around them both, because it was the only real difference between them, one had seen the barricades fall the other had not, one had chosen not to fight whilst the other saw his choice to take pictures as the only sane action when his species went nuts. In many ways the photographer was an evil creation, maintaining a cause and effect logic even when the cause as he saw it was psychosis, whereas the Maniac was all about his psychosis's. Yet in defence of the photographer from 20, journalism had not been tamed by finance or political corruptions, whereas the Maniac had watched as his profession much like the rights of the people's had been watered down until it's whisky had become water.

Their minds as the killing went on we're very different too, the turbulence of the Maniac rose and swelled with its violent insanities, whereas the calmness of the photographer was matched with his beating heart. Imagine this difference, the Maniac has a very normal sized heart, he has nothing genetically questionable about him, nor is his mind physically damaged. The photographers heart itself is physically about a third larger than the human average, it's beating could wake him as a child, yet think of the accumulated adrenalin and shock in his childhood a moment, his friendly calm is in many ways death itself as he lacks any of the moral tools others around him employ in their work, he only has reality and a scar on the left of his temple, an injury that happened before his brain had the faculty to remember. So as this carnage escalates floor by floor, ask this question, is it wrong to fight for love and passion in the way the Maniac does, or is it better to have no love but light? Oh the photographer loves his woman, she has a huge nose and in her arms he is happy, but can someone who will not fight for that which is loved or right be capable of love as most humans know it, or is that merely the reality of the Maniac. Should this work of words be called the man who loved to much, for that at the end is why the Maniac fights. But. It is for you the reader to judge the right and wrong of it all.

Purchased as I was between two identical minds, both in their way disfigured by their worlds, gave me a unique opportunity to glimpse the organic malfunction that is inherent to life on Earth. In comparison both men were quite civil when compared to those they were killing, the victims had a collection of unsavoury lusts lurking within them, one man stood out to me, his crime was to follow the herd, and follow it he did, overriding his own morality because he lived in a world where everything and everyone was negotiable, and somewhere in the social flow a gang of criminals had been born, all of them reflecting each other like imperfect mirrors, the refracting flaws were multiplied exponentially, repeated, replicated within each person, until right and wrong had been reduced to cause and effect, and in this fluid reality treated as an abstract concept. Any wrong doings had first to be discovered, and then, well then it was in the hands of the litigators, the lawyers, where the truth is simply a manipulable tool, and in conjunction with language a dangerous mechanism where blue could become orange in any court of law. Such was the mindset of these men, and as I from my unique perspective knows, billions of people were destined to die as a result of this oiled lust for profits, yet the legislators and legaleros would fine them, however those fines were minuscule in comparison to the profits, but equally, impotent to right any wrong beyond the corporate scale. Steve framed a shot as the Maniac pointed his cowboy guns at one of the many who bore responsibility, yet as the Maniac spoke both men were unaware of the futility of his words, words which when scrutinised pass the test of time and logic, but in a litigatory world are abjectly irrelevant, as irrelevant as the products, poverty and the fatalities caused when misery and profit collide, that was something the Maniac had yet to learn but the man from 20 could never have

understood it.

"I would Twofold be emboldened if my words could like daggers, fly into the heart of the issue, tearing at the very flesh of all who wouldst mock freedom, yet like illiterate beasts they are deafened to all but the greed of commerce that clamours in their minds eye, blinded are they by their very own eyes to see not life's merit but by logics weird profit and elevation. Causing nought but misery with it, yet like decomposing wax clotted into the very wood of the tree of life, your thoughts this day end sir, for your glimpse of the fragment of what you could have been at this final moment, heralds your regrets as you face death itself in this darkened palace of treacherous silver, all of which you would trade to live moments more, yet silver is nought but mineral and this accumulation even though as vast as moon itself will not save you."

Time passed slowly for the man hidden beneath the three corpses, waiting for a rescue that never came, softened hands gripped the bodies close, as with laboured breath the mammal concealed behind all civilised men hid, mouse like, he heard his words of execution, invisibly he watched as the Maniacs gun went off, the vacant empty fall of his victim, slumping slowly like a bag of apples would, then the men and the woman had left and he waited. Expecting sirens, his corpulent bulbous flesh trembled independently of mind, his logic gone, he waited for the sirens, for the rescuers, for society to return, finally unsure of his own breathing, he stood, almost floating, despite the clotting bloods, the Cock brother swore from somewhere within himself for vengeance, here one of the richest men in the world, with hands covered as they were with oil and blood, shook, finally letting loose a piercing scream of intense emotion, an emotion you would call rage.

THE MANIACS GOOD FOR BUSINESS.

Nguyen sat reading reports in his London garden, watching the Regents canal flow slowly by, then he leant over and lay sideways on the garden bench watching the autumn leaves drift in random chaos with the flow of the water, his mind drifted like the leaves did, briefly he thought of the dragon flies, he had seen none this summer, not even a single Blue Dasher had graced his view, they had gone, like so much else had and he let out a sigh. For a spy master listlessness could in normal circumstances prove fatal, all the plots and manipulations had accumulated in his mind to focus

like tidal drift lines on these few moments of inner clarity, a clarity that had taken hold of him over the past week, a realisation that he had become the bad guy in the movie, in fact he looked at his spy ring and knew that the real Picasso would spit in his eyes. It was true that he was an artist in the field of manipulation, and his duplicity was compartmentalised to a frightening level, but somehow he wanted to undo what had been done, to displace the past and its logics and start anew, so dumbstruck was he at this concept that he lay in an apathetic daze, a daze of thoughts that were colliding in minds view.

I could have taken control of the direction, but since I inherited my curiosity from humanity in the first place, I didn't, I could have though...

So he lay watching the cold world slip past him, clouds drifted by reflected in the water. Water, he thought of Kiribati drowning in its Pacific tomb, and he knew that humanity here had blown it. The ocean depths could take over a thousand years to cool, but that was unlikely, not unless humans cut their emissions beneath the 1.5 increase. Of all the unexpected reactions he had analysed in his life, the most unexpected was ocean acidification, the implications were harder to plot than a Forrest fire meeting petrol station. We had blown it. Not just because of acidity, everywhere he looked he saw

an economic system out of control, even the air was poisoned, the bio accumulations of most humans had now reached a point of fatality, with millions dying yearly as a result, but even here with the dangers apparent in the air we all breathed he knew nothing would be done, not if it obscured the profit horizons.

Nguyen rolled the combination around his tongue, mouthing the two words silently. "Profit Horizons." Yes power and costs, all of modern mans gadgetry couldn't save him from himself, massed extinctions were now a fact of life, even the bees were losing out, how was no real mystery but the why, that was psychology, massed human psychology. To evolve an upside down system of values that flew in the face of your own biological imperatives or your species survival, that was humanities finest achievement. Yet at the back of his mind was the problem of Steve, the politicals like bleating sheep had demanded the Picasso network do something, deal with the man, but undeniably as Nguyen had begun to realise, the Maniac was good for business, he may also be good for the species. As would be the knowledge of the other universes, the worlds where these mistakes had not happened. He would have to talk to them, directly, the idea scared his fragmented world view though.

As did the knowledge that his fate and the Maniacs were intertwined, just like they had been as children. Nguyen rolled over and fell asleep.

THE ALISON'S CONUNDRUM

Even though these words spring from the page like a delinquent obsession, what are they? What is this process, I have tried other writers to transmit these dialogues but I have to ask if I as a virus have developed a psychology of sorts, a psychology that like a jelly fish lacks a brain, is it possible, to have the P word at all for a life form like me. Humans yes they are all about psychology, but why am I obsessed by them? Honey badgers are bloody smart critters, like little logic darts they overcome any obstacle, but they have never merited the same level of attention. I was enjoying the differences in the Steve's, and the man from 20 was no exception, but strangely this little hippy version lost in his light beams was probably a favourite. When he learned from myself about Alison's orphaned boy, after the Lexxon massacre, his solution was pragmatic genius, he returned to 20 and found the Alison there, she with her daughter and husband listened patiently to the crazed photographer, but being young professionals that could not take on another child.

Undeterred he went to Zeros embassy in his version of London, the woman heard him out, more because of his press card than any other reason, the journalists in 20 are known in every dimension as the most cantankerous and unstoppable posse of people in any universe, and it's actually true, however the photographer man was also known to be quite chilled out by their standards at least, so the secretary searched the known universes for the other potential Alison's out there. He found one in 3, so took off and spoke directly with their ambassador, not dropping a verb he mentioned the ambassadors man mistress in 20, and she being a very conscientious and married professional, found herself giving him an immediate visa and also a free permit to travel as a visiting journalist. She was particularly relieved that it was him who had found out about her private love nest and not one of the more cut throat representatives of 20. By now his wife Jocelyne had joined him in his quest, so had I as it was thoroughly enjoyable to listen to his wheeling and dealing going about the multiverse to find a home for one lost little orphan boy. As a side point the people of Zero actually had a charitable set up for the child but were mesmerised at the humanity of his disturbing solution.

So in 3's version of Chicago, he met another Alison, her husband sat next to her, and they had so far failed to have any children despite all their efforts, the father who had run off in 21, had stayed and fallen in love with this Alison, and Steve sat telling them that genetically the child was theirs, that the little guy was a healthy bundle of kid, Jocelyne sat quietly, her rather fine French mind was thinking of passion, and she knew that passion would clinch this deal, almost coyly she said.

"The child you dream of is waiting for you, he knows you as his mother already, you are his mom as far as he is concerned and." She turned to the husband. "You will have to earn his trust, and fight to protect your child sir. The boy is waiting, alone, he needs your protection." The husband sat back stunned knowing she was right, knowing that this beautiful woman with an enormous nose was right. Finally with Alison's eyes springing forth tears of joy, the deal was struck.

"Great." Said Steve. "Brilliant." Said Jocelyne. "Fantastic." Said Steve. And then together they said. "This gets better."

With their personal mantra complete and with the couple in tow they went to 21. I manipulated the child's disappearance from the legal records, but when the lost little boy saw his moms doppelgänger he raced towards her, needless to say Steve took his shot, but Jocelyne smiled. The little boy knew she was a different mom, knew all his life at he was in a different world, but courtesy of the journalist, he at least got a second chance, and in Jocelyne a new auntie, yet think of the reality here, if she were the same person, which she was, then is there a part of all humans that is locked into the greater picture of all humanity across the greater multiverse, in fact ask yourself are you reading this in other universes, and are you drawing the same conclusions?

PICTURE POSTCARDS FROM A HOLIDAYING MANIAC.

The Maniac scowled at Maria, he wasn't to sure of the photographers suggested holiday, but Neoklis was sold, as was Fawkes as he was happy wherever he was. Maria was against the idea, convinced something could go wrong and that they would be stuck in a strange universe, meanwhile the photographer spoke of his son, and of the wonders of 20, where the internal combustion engine had not taken hold, "you can breath the air safely." So finally the foursome left for the other universe, although with one word of caution. "Just don't obsess on her nose ok, Jocelyne doesn't like that even though I bloody love that nose, she doesn't take jokes on that subject too well." Having been warned they arrived in 20. A blonde boy ran up and introduced himself, whilst the shocked Maniac pondered at the seamless speed of the transference process, slight nausea gripped at his stomach, yet when he turned to look for Maria he was stunned at the change in the landscape. Where had been streets and skyscrapers he saw a forrest, trees and insects buzzed past him, and the air vaporised his breath in the cold temperature, temperatures more biting than 21 had been.

The boy spoke excitedly with his father and then with a childish smirk pointed and asked. "Why are you a Maniac Mr."

The Maniac shrugged, then saw the back of a woman walking a horse carriage towards them, her

walk and gait were smooth, and having gotten used to the photographers unusual almost pelvic steps he was surprised that someone so graceful would have become entangled with someone so clumsy. Yet when he saw her face the Maniac took a step back, his eyes filled with a memory of Camden Town, a memory from 25 years ago assaulted his mind as he saw the woman who was truly his first loves smile. Unaware of his memories turmoil Maria looked and saw a beautiful woman, she could see that beyond the gentleness of her eyes and the eloquent curve of her hips, that there was a toughness within her, she was to learn that most of the people of 20 were tough, somewhere in their history they had decided to not control Mother Nature, choosing instead to live alongside her, but even though she heard a distant howling Maria was trying desperately not to look at the very elegant and large nose. Even when Jocelyne frowned at the noises from the forrest and pulled a Winchester cowboy rifle from the carriage, Maria who had a relatively large konk on her face was mesmerised, not at the size but at the fact that it worked, this woman's face graced a level of oblique beauty, yet she whistled suddenly to get everybody attention.

"Great." Said the photographer.

"Brilliant." Said the boy winking at the Maniac as he said.

"Fantastic." Said Jocelyne as she lit a cigarette and cradled the rifle.

Then all three of them laughed and loudly pronounced.

"This gets better."

Neoklis had heard such howls before, as a boy, his memory sprang into action, working on a more immediate scale than the Maniacs mind had. "Was that wolves?"

"Of course." Jocelyne replied with a slightly nervous giggle. "Are you shitting me, London here has wolves?" The Maniac finally said.

"Oh qui, but rather the wolves than the boars." Jocelyne said curious to meet her lovers double, the voice was different in pace, but physically he seemed similar.

"Rather the wolves than the Bears actually." The photographer muttered.

"Yep last year me n mom got treed all night by a rather cross bear." The boy added with his eyes alight with excitement. "It was massive." The maniac looked at the child, feeling a physical affinity with this fluke of inter dimensional genetic travelling. "Grrrrrrrrrrr." The boy said pawing at the air.

"Can we get the fuck outta here." Maria suddenly announced, as a Spanish fear of wolf packs gripped at her thoughts. So the group climbed in to the functional open carriage and Jocelyne drove them away. The Maniac smiled inwardly, he was loving 20 already..........

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE

Think about the minutiae of your world that you take for granted, in all of the human ones people, love, hate and make little people, they babble and chitter chatter their days away, yet although it is

immediately recognisable to any of you upright walking monkey mammals, it is in the small details that thing get weird. Like all the quantum social differentials add up and collide causing a seasick sensation in any visitors mind, the Maniac felt that, Neoklis was adapting but Maria was drowning in confusion, and as a virus I can tell you women are the more communicative of your species, so the subtleties were all adding up for Maria. Needless to say Fawkes was taking it all in his stride, and getting on with the two border collies that Steve's family had. Almost aside all this is the fact that every Steve in all the different worlds seems to have a sheepdog attached to them somewhere. Which is strangely comforting. Although Fawkes felt that his fellow canines smelt odd and he did to them too, he didn't seem to let it phase him, yet for the visiting humans, 20 was a shock of the recognisable and the familiar, which accumulated its mass in their minds. Everywhere they looked was a strangeness of the everyday details, in twenty Picasso was writer, whilst George Romero was a documentary film maker, and all of these minor differences turned the visitors minds to scrambled eggs and soup.

Even the newspapers were recognisably incoherent, the English both spoken and written had evolved, but the stories were so off the wall in comparison to 21 that Maria was forced to conclude that falling fatally off your horse was the most common way to go. Picnicking and being chased by wild boars only rated page five, whilst a local fisherman pulled in a gigantic giant squid was the 20 version of the silly season. Then the tech was way too "Jules Verne" according to the maniac, they even had a massive submarine called the freaking Nautilus. Maria was shocked that they had with very basic engineering and sound physics made it to the moon and to Mars. Unlike everyone else they didn't do it with rockets, realising you could with a much slower speed avoid all the burning re-entry and also much of the messing around they had evolved a pressurised balloon, then not content with stopping there they had built a massive tower that elevated beyond the atmosphere, delivering atmosphere and equipment to the people working there. Which resulted in an odd conversation with the photographer.

He was sat on a rug with his dogs and a laptop tablet, his son was flopped casually with his head resting on his fathers back, whilst Jocelyne was animatedly engaged in a conversation with the Maniac, as she also flopped on her husband. "Well why don't you ask him he has been up there, but trust me he didn't come back normal." She said with her gentle crisp French accent. The photographer was lost in an abstract edit of a photo from 21, failing to engage in the conversation by effectively filtering the words out, until Jocelyne twisted his ear sharply. A broadened smile crossed the length of her face as he frowned clutching his ear.

"What?"

Maria relaxing next to the maniac had noticed that people in 20 were more likely to rabbit punch and pinch you than they were in 21, so she wasn't surprised to see this, but the small boys chuckle was cute with an essence of slapstick cruelty to it. The maniac leant forwards and looked at him.

"Tell me about space?" Steve blinked at him, not immediately understanding the question. "The moon base and stuff."

"Oh that." He frowned slightly the pushed the tablet away from him. "What do you want to know about that for?"

"Che fu." Jocelyne mumbled incoherently in French then slapped his ears. He turned to her and she laughed slapping her thigh then kissed him. "Answer the nice murderers question Steve." Just

before he could speak the little boy cuffed his head too. Jocelyne picked the child up and laughed.

"Well I went to Mars a few years ago, but regularly hit the moon bases, there are twelve of them now, mostly built by the water ice pockets up there. The suits get in the way of the cameras, but they are skinnier than the suits you have in 21, in fact all that fossil fuel burning is really inefficient, but the lunar landscapes incredible, it's the one time that I wished I was a landscape photographer because I don't feel like I ever did it justice. But the light is so unadulterated, pure, the shadows are so dark out there, but that's the moon, beautiful, Mars however is a dust trap, the light though vivid is not as clean as it is on earth, the suits we use there are easier, and the gravity is for all effects and purposes similar to earth so you don't even have the bouncing fun of it all."

Every now and then Steve would pause, just stop dead in mid sentence, literally you could see him thinking, he smiled. "Here we can only see a few of the stars, but up there you can see billions, you can see the blue ball we call home, floating like so much stardust slipping through your fingers. It." He looked to Jocelyne with the strangest of smiles. "It changes you. The universe and its abundant destructive beauty alters the way you view yourself, seeing all as stardust, seeing all as physics, or better put maths. I love her, but also know deep inside of myself, that through us, my species, who are made up of atoms and molecules, well I know the universe knows love like this through me, as a construct of it, and although I love it up there, as does Jocelyne, we also need to be here, yet in the back of my mind is that truth of it, I am the universe it is me, a part of it all, belonging I guess, but ultimately the universe knows emotions through us." A distant smile crossed his lips, with eyes hazing from a past brush with infinity, then he focuses on the maniac. "You should go, tomorrow, to the moon, you should see this, it may change you, it may heal you, or destroy you, but you of all people need to go."

Maria sat back, aware that all the Steves she had met with the exception of the Maniac seemed to have a poetic view of physics in them, she glanced at her killer, then at his reflection from 20, his calm versus the maniacs menace, then she thought of the moon, fearlessly, she wasn't scared, she wanted to be there, she wanted to see it. "How can we get there tomorrow?" She spoke without being aware of her voice.

"Ask Jocelyne she's one of the pilots, I just take the photos and think a lot." Steve said, a memory of zero gee loving glanced at his minds eye.

Jocelyne looked up with the boy sat on her knee, the child was lost in a book. "I will make the calls and if I can swing it I will fly you."

"We really could be there tomorrow?" The Maniac said softly. "You will be up there but the moon is a few days away at least." Jocelyne said.

"It will have something to do with the availability of Windows and burns." The little boy mumbled.

"Oh great." Said Steve. "Brilliant." Mumbled the boy. "Fantastic." Said both parents, then all three smiled and said. "This gets better."

THE SKY SCREW

Space was surprisingly a dog friendly environment, cats didn't like it, but dogs got it, zero gravity in small doses even seemed enjoyable to canines. The Maniac was marvelling at the continuous sky screw, watching the elevators moving like a demented Escher style spiral stairway, the whole thing was gravity fed, and Jocelyne had seemed quite proud of the fact that it powered itself using the weight of the conveyors return journey to pull them up and also generate all of its electricity. "It actually powers that towns needs." She said as the wind pulled at her hair mischievously. Krusevo a small high altitude town in the Macedonian hills stretched out beneath them. "We have this one in Europe, then El Alto in Bolivia, Lhasa, and of course Quito but the seismic problems mean it is being decommissioned." She pointed to the brightest object in the distant sky. "That's the main station, it's an asteroid we captured and hollowed out, brilliant place, but hopefully we can come back via Lhasa as the Tibetans are lovely, and it's a very bright but barren place." In her orange jumpsuit she stood with one hand on the rails and another on her hip. The photographer was sat on the tiled floor sending a picture to one of his publications, he glanced up and squinted at the distant object.

"So you have four sky screws like this, and how many stations have you got up there?" Maria asked as the small city began to get smaller in her view.

"Oh there are a few hundred different stations and I do not know how many probes and satellites we have up there, we sent Viking up in the fifties and that's already in the Ort cloud, the data's coming back, but many of our systems have advanced so much that it's often unreadable." She shrugged as she said that. "For instance dependent upon your trajectory pathway there are 8 Asterio stations between Earth and the moon, half way houses if you like to think that way, plus a flock of emergency places, small rock refuges with supplies oxygen or food that we can use if anything goes wrong."

There was a grunt from the photographer. "Yeah let's not use those unless we have to the last time scared the pants off of me."

Jocelyne laughed nervously. "I was shipping a few scientist types when there was a malfunction, but managed to ballistically reach a way station, which put me out of communication for a day and a half." She pointed down with her thumb and pulled a face. "This one was a nervous wreck by the time I made contact, really he was sobbing apparently."

"Sod off you were pregnant when that happened, and backatcha after that Italian gig went pear shaped." He said with a smirking squint in his eyes.

The Maniac spoke again whilst looking at the very distant grind as their elevator accended. "What could go wrong in Italy, like the Italians are softies on a good day and the countries lovely?" In fact in the back of his mind the Maniac had noted that apart from a few mafia types and a retired but rather corrupt prime minister no one in Italy really rated killing.

"Oh in your world it's lovely, in ours they have a four sided civil war going on, and it's been going on for years, whilst this idiot got shot in Milano covering the freaking thing." Jocelyne glanced at the photographer who nodded his head as she spoke. "And I flew in and got him out, whilst I was

still pregnant too, and that's scared the hell out of me all round."

"It was a shoulder wound, nothing serious, and." The photographer stood up putting his arms around her. "Damn it we are as bad as each other."

"It's your kid I feel for." Maria said as Fawkes curled up next to her on the bench feeling slightly sea sick from the altitude.

THERES ROOM AT THE TOP.

Zero had gathered up several Steve's, and at the top of the sky screw they had clustered together in a small cafe, one from 17 was slurping a milk shake in a slovenly way, 17 was noted for its absolute lack of culture, so the man seemed to be alone, albeit surrounded by chicken bones. A more polite Steve from 8 had tried to chat with the savage in question but let's face it, in 17 most conversations start with the words "fuck off," so to the effete man from the overly polite reality of 8, there was no likely way he could communicate without an appalling headache. "Fuck your fucking mother." Said Steve 17 as he retreated to more civilised climes at the other table. The echo of a huge belch follows his words and the Steve from Zero winced inwardly towards the idiot who had invited him. "Hoi gimme another coffee you dozy tart." The man shouted at the waitress, being from 20 she wanted to punch him out of his chair. The man from 8 almost hid under his table in shock.

It was as the words were shouted that the Maniac and Steve 20 arrived, and hurled a sea of expletives at the man from 17. "If you talk that way one more fucking time I am going to boot you out of the nearest airlock faster than a freaking cheetah on amphetamines would throw you out. Am I fucking clear to you you freaking loud mouthed shit bag." The maniac felt something similar to respect for him at that point. But it back fired, with the mans reply.

"Go take a flying fuck at a galloping gooses you fucking muppet." Steve 20 glared at the man as he shouted out. Then dodged side ways avoiding the thrown piece of chicken. "You ain't got an airlock big enough for me."

The Maniac looked at this bastardised version of himself, briefly wondering if he killed him would it be suicide or murder? "Like what the fuck dude? Are you fucking crazy."

"I could have all of yah any time any place any where you fucking cunts are nothing to me, fucking cloned wankers."

Jocelyne looked at the man, then she used her communicator, but a short woman stood, she was from 9, the Steve's recognised the eyes, the walk, the expression, and she stepped forwards, then with her palm extended she slapped the man so hard on his face that he fell from his chair, the woman stared briefly down at him, when she spoke her voice was recognisable to the men in the room, Jocelyne looked with an ambiguous curiosity, then glanced at the frown on her husbands face, the aloof woman who's tone was slightly higher said one word. "Enough." Then with a chopping gesture she turned back to her table. The Steve from 8 sat down next to her, and she finally introduced herself. "Hi, I'm Stevo." Jocelyne stepped forwards and sat on the other side of her, her eyes scanned the blonde woman, who's wild hair almost flowed separately to her body, her hips were slim, but the eyes, the lips even the nose, finally Jocelyne leant back sharply and almost grunted her surprised words.

"She's a Steve."

The quieter man from 8 nodded, glancing between the two women, for all of them including Stevo, this was confusing, imagine it briefly, think about meeting an opposite you, like a reflection with or without breasts, try to picture your own opposite in your mind, for all of them this genetic raffle result was greeted with immediate confusion, Jocelyne who knew one of the Steve's intimately was combining feminine jealousies and genuine adoration for this apparition. "You are a Steve?"

Stevo simply nodded.

OH REAPER

All of Jocelynes launches were accompanied by music, for some reason she found the rhythmic beat of any harmony aided her concentration. The ship itself was quite angular, not even remotely aerodynamic, but since it only operated in a vacuum it's shape was simply an expression of its particle pushing drive. Knowing that most of the Steve's aboard wouldn't be inclined to panic, in fact that would probably have their collected noses pressed against the window, she hit the music, Sia sang about the reaper, but with a gentle pressure the ship pulled away from the sky screw, Fawkes barked softly from his buckled seat, as Maria sat next to the aviatrix felt a flutter of panic as her stomach contracted, she had survived shoot outs but this was unexpected, when the French woman turned and winked to her she felt very reassured, behind her a hum of excited voices echoed, like a flock of seagulls the Steve's were babbling in a calmly reassuring way, only Neoklis felt completely terrified, gripping at the chairs arm rest.

A jet of gas altered the ships trajectory, the view became surreal as the moon then the Earth spun past, then Jocelyne spoke into the coms unit. "Hold on to your breakfast folks." Focused as she was she didn't know that the music had changed, the voice sang I'm Alive as she hit the charger preparing it and then gently said. "5,4,3,2,1." Maria was catapulted back into her chair as the engines pushed, she felt her chest emptying of air, she almost screamed but the music and Jocleynes laughter relaxed that panic within her, part way through this primary burn the ship spun angling itself towards the moon, but bit by bit the pressure subsided. Then she felt herself getting lighter, until her body itself weighed nothing at all, her stomach butterflied itself, as Jocelyne unbuckled from the seat. "I will check the boys, and that girl." Maria nodded as she clumsily fumbled at the buckle.

Nausea gripped at Neoklis feeling his stomach buoying itself against his spine, Fawkes in a fit of canine panic let loose a jet of urine, which slowly gave up its momentum and began to collect into a ball of pissy liquid, forming a perfect sphere as Jocelyne swam gracefully from the cockpit, several Steve's were amazed at the rolling spherical fluidity of it, the Steve from 8 chuckled and stroked at Fawkes, then announced. "Planets it forms into a ball just like planets do." Sunlight burst from a porthole and the ball began to reflect light madly, Steve 20 pointed his camera, using a super wide angle lens he Focused close to the ball but caught a flock of fascinated Steve's pondering its wonders. Jocelyne pragmatically pulled a hose from the hull, then vacuumed the liquid away, which resulted in few Steve's protesting.

"That fellas was a ball of piss, doggy piss to be exact but if you look out of your portals you will see home as you have never seen it before." Jocelyne kicked of to check on Neoklis.

"He is such a clever dog." Said the Maniac calmly, "that was a beautiful pee there mate." Fawkes barked still uncomfortable with the lack of gravity.

"You fucking bunch of retarded muppets, it was piss, what if I let fly would I get applause too, fucking dog piss."

"Oh great 17 has woken up everybody!" Stevo said loudly scowling at her male incarnation menacingly.

"Yeah he's like a grumpy little ray of sunshine, couldn't you just squeeze his cheeks." Said Steve 20.

"It was piss you wankers just fucking piss." 17 blew his words across the cabin.

Zero Steve looked from the window, then laughed and said. "8 was right it is just how the planets formed up. Exactly the same mechanism, nothing but gravity and the mass of emergent time required for this dance."

8 looked at home as the ship spun slowly rotating in its orbit. "What's this emergent time concept about?" He said quietly. Zero pointed to 20 who was taking yet another photo of them all, their backs facing him as the watched the Earth through the portals. As a reader if you think about it this way, all of the universes shared certain traits, opposable thumbs in humans is a good example, yet all of them were advancing at different rates, the science base of each world was unique, and because of the massive failure in 17, (which is an entirely different story.) There was little crossover beyond three, sharing the knowledges of different universes was also difficult because of some very physical differences between them all. The photon spins at a different speed in Zero when compared to 20, the power to weight ratio of a jet turbine is alarmingly different, on Zero the mass and the speed of the turbines is so huge that it is rarely used, on 20 they may not be in a hurry but their turbines are more effective than anywhere else, using airships as much as they do, in 20 they even have a slow jet that can be used to speed the balloonists from turbulent problems or storms. All of these differences collide when tech is shared. The airships are again a good example as they do not work very well anywhere but 20. So when others attempt to emulate a system, that's when things get tricky as all of the maths needs to be written from the drawing board, so the principle may be sound but the mechanical element has to be started afresh. So 8 was oblivious to emergent time, yet the theory would be as relevant to his world as it is to your own.

Jocelyne over hearing this wrestled the camera from her husband with a laugh. "This will be in the cockpit for a while, you start explaining." And with that she pushed back to Maria.

ENTANGLED PARTICLES AND ALL THAT JAZZ

The journey to the moon has its own rhythm, trapped as they all were in a glorified tin can even the Maniac had time to relax, putting behind him all thoughts of killing he sat numbed as months of stress began to wash away from his psyche. Yet the argument rolled as the Steve's fought with fraught intellect to grasp the concepts that were being played with. "Emergent time, causality as we know it, is simple in one way and scary in another. You have the past, the present, and the future, that is how human memory sees it all, yet memory is not everything." Steve nodded as he spoke with clumsy alacrity, in fact he was getting the sequence of his explanation wrong, which did not

bode well for everyone else. Seriously when a noted expert in any field talks eloquent gibberish it is silliness to translate, but his confused audience tried to grasp it. He looked at them all, then smiled realising he had chosen the wrong place to start and said, "I am going to start again."

Yet was it the wrong place to start? Think about your memory, actually better yet think about what you are reading, the human mind is a sequential mechanism, or so it seems to me as a virus, so the present is so smoothly integrated that you are never aware of it. You know that a Maniac is taking a break in a universe called 20, you know this is mid rampage, you know that there are other dimensions, and that people are visiting them all, yet suddenly you are in the middle of a science lecture, you didn't expect this, you might have been expecting a space pirate, or a meteorite, but your memory relies on sequences, events operating like waves do, predictable, yet here you have a bump, a kink in the system, unexpected, much like a meteor strike in that respect. Your perception of time is the same. It is where your memory tricks you into seeing more than there is and at the same time less. Being a quantum chaos is my basic nature, so the lack of causality in my narration can be forgiven, and as Steve 20 is about to explain causality is everything and nothing.

"Ok all around and in everything is quantum foam." He said looking at his reflections confusion. "It's everywhere but it's a world of chaos, it's non causal too." Several frowns and some humpy swearing later he continued. "Right think of the alphabet, look at the letters, now jumble all the letters, make some capitals, some backwards, and also doubles or triples of each other. Now try and write any word and it gets jumbled. Without the framework or boundaries it turns into gibberish. That type of gibberish is quantum foam, it's a sub atomic atomic membrane in and around everything, and there time has no dimension. Cause and effect is turned to butterscotch candy as the sequence of any event is randomly scattered throughout the overall system, so a particle could be born after if has died, or be in an infinite number of places simultaneously. That's just one particle. One." He said throwing his hands in the air. Now multiply such a chaos by infinity and you find the very fabric of causality, has grown from the utter gibberish that is quantum foam."

The Steve's had an assortment of expressions on their faces, confusion through to bliss was etched upon them. "Now just to put some icing on the cake, picture all of this entangled together, and infinity of interconnected particle relationships, in a place where action is everything's and to hell with the mathematics. Now throw an upright walking monkey mammal into the equation, a mammal that has evolved in a fringe area of this foam that we may choose to call reality." He tapped upon the table to emphasise his remarks. "If only I had brought a can opener with me, then I could open one of us up and show the rest how this trickery unfolds to our perspective. Think of all of our emotions, emotions that work as a matrix for coordinating our reactions, emotions are everything to us, the brain measures conflicting emotions, but still all that doesn't come close to the emergent truth of time. Like a side effect of some particle origami, time as we know it is emergent, past and future merge to create a present, that's the sequence that we all accept and it is all that we have."

He paused whilst Zero Steve was amazed by his calm level of thrilling excitement, and it is hard to explain this, especially when I lack a pulse, or a body, or eyeballs, yet it was with a riveted calm that he delivered the words, words that did fall on some deafened ears but also words that plunged into the minds eye of some of those present, but with a friendly tone he spoke, like a sleepy child would describe a roller coaster. "Emergent time is a property of entangled particles, like the grease that wheels on a bike use. It flows. It is everything, there may be nothing else but this emergence, we. Humans, us, have evolved in this fabric, we are wired to see the world not through our eyes but

through our minds, minds that have evolved and fine tuned their ability to get closer to the present than most other creatures. There is an eighty millisecond lag between us and reality, that's how long it was thought that the brain needed to understand the real, and translate the sequence of events to the person, that's known in all of our universes, but I had a what if moment and we have studied this in twenty till the cows came home, and what we found is this. The brain is a bilateral organ, it's not lagging behind the now, because emergent time is a 180 to 220 millisecond flowing wave, and the human brain is using the insulas, which are little thumb sized areas in each hemisphere of the human brain, they surf with emergent time, much like a rifle site uses two points of reference to hit a third, the brain has offset both insulas perception of time, one ahead one behind, to give us a mid line point on the present." He sat sharply down looking mesmerised by his internal vision. "You know since the day I put all that together, I have been satisfied and happy."

"Think about it this way, there is only the now, everything else has gone or is en route, it's past and future energies may even push and pull, but even with that taken into account, there can only ever be a now. This is where our memory messes our ability to perceive it that way up, trust me your memory is one of humanities most important tools, but like anything else it has got a flip side to it. Picture an ex, even though you may have been deliriously happy in their arms when you remember them, you will attach emotions to it, emotions from your future perspective, so like a bitter and twisted defeat you will remember them, and you will always remember people wrong, but it is that wrong that enables you to function. Memory is imperfect and as can be proven manipulable. Using a delayed light and buzzer experiment, what we found is that at first all subjects spot the delay, but after a few tries, they will edit out the delay, but when the delay between buzzer and light is removed most if not all the people tested pushed the freaking button before anything had happened and all claim to have seen the impossible in that experiment, all of them, so the brain edited out the pointless delay, then totally screwed up the sequence of events. That folks could be happening around us all day long."

Stepping away from his words and being a quantum being, the best analogy would be a light symphony where sound and colours are mixed, you see I do not live in a time as you would recognise it, I lack even the basic thermodynamic tools to possess a biological clock, I live here, but also there and then "always" simultaneously, confused. Bach the musician was when I tried to explain it to him, Mozart was too off his freaking rocker to care, but this French type Jaques lousier got it, even I have a positive response to his jazz album play Bach, as it is a wave, not just restricted to being one thing, not just one expression of it either, your memory enables you to build a picture, whilst I am in it all, and actually mindless, a mindless virus that is everywhere and where? Yet without memory or structure I perceive all of it, on one level like a photo but on another like a stream, the universe cannot be expected to conform to human requirement, and it is a wave and also a clockwork thing, as are humans, and music often expresses that pluralistic reality in a way that logic cannot. I don't believe it isn't ultimately a logical comprehendible process, one that Steve 20 believes will be eloquent in its simplicity, but he and the many other species that have passed by in the universe haven't yet evolved their sciences to achieve an understanding of it. What 20 Steve does understand is scary, but he may be the first ape to make it or as is more likely, he probably won't. Yet the reality that his own biology, brain, memory, genetic structure is holding him back, is one that is universal to all of you, and the opposite could be said of me, as I simply am, but have no tools to attack the issue, other than the organics like you reading this around me.

So I tinker with what I understand, the writer that I am abusing to write this is another Steve, he is from a universe beyond 21, and even though he is bound to become extinct there with the rest of his

species, he writes, whilst I burrow away at all of them. Even before they were born, as I am evolutions little helper, I have influence beyond the conscious world and in the very none causal quantum foam of everything. I feel it sometimes, the influence you have on the fabric of everything we all know, like a charge of current roaming through me, your scientist are aware of this impact that the observer has on any quantum experiment you want to mention, but I am a conduit. You see like you I evolved and we are interconnected like Lego bricks. Which returns me to the concept of time, I only experience it through you, and without critters evolving would never have guessed or been aware it was there at all. So as I know there is about to be a major malfunction on the moon, let me return you to the story such as it is.

TRANQUILITY OR BUST

Space suits, the maniac had expected them to be bulky, but in twenty mobility was favoured over warmth, and the system was designed in a way that meant no one could remain still for to long, 20 Jocelyne ballooned almost flying over his head, which was no surprise to 20 Steve as she had more moon time than most, so he raced sedately behind her laughing, as the maniac cursed the suits lack of insulation. Everybody else had opted to stay at the station, but here he was running with the two of them to see the first landing site on the moon. The two men although identical genetically, had developed very different minds from their experiences, the Maniac was stunned at the empty beauty of the moons wildernesses, not alive but not dead either, and without air the Maniac was looking at this place sceptically, seeing no potential beyond industry he was dismissing it all. To 20 Steve, he saw the emptiness as a vastness, an expression of how important life itself was to this universe, he saw beauty, he saw light, and unlike his namesake 20 Steve loved light, and almost mesmeric his mind was blissing out on the clean unadulterated nature of the light on Luna. Jocelyne was laughing as she also loved this cathedral of a satellite, besides that she was also enjoying the blossoming of her own body in the lower gravity.

"My moon boobs are blossoming." She giggled through the radio, and it was true, in space her face had bloomed, but it was also expressed in other parts of any mammals body.

"Woo hoo don't forget your man later." 20 Steve shouted back. Lost briefly in his physical memory of her the man forgot the moon, drenched in his lust and love of her.

"Moon boobs?" The Maniac said over the helmets tinny speakers.

"Ahh qui, let me explain." Jocelynes voice had gentle laughter to it as they bounced across the surfaces. "It will show you why all the men on the moon are smiling a lot." The Maniac frowned from behind his reflective visor. "The body reacts to lesser gravity, cells expand, you comprehend me yes?"

"Uh huh."

Well all of us sort of swell a bit, and my tits are bigger, and my bum, and well it's not by a lot but it's pretty noticeable to me."

Now Steve 20 loves her a lot so his next comment is not really that blatant. "You have the bestest breasts in the whole universe you know, and I love that bum o yours too."

"Backatcha mon petit ettoile."

The maniac then followed the bouncing pair of 20's as hand in hand, they ballooned over the smaller craters ahead of them. A moon buggy was belting across the surface parallel to them and it veered in their direction, partially airborne as it hurtled in the lower gravity, as it got closer the Maniac recognised the music playing, Mambo number five, it had been a hit way back when in 21 but to hear it relocated in 20 was sort of disturbing, a pair of teenagers laughed out.

"You heading to tranquility?" One of them shouted in a heavy American accent. Jocelyne recognised one of them as Natalya, the teenage daughter of the Russian scientist Dr Karandashova, she was a pretty rampant wild child and regularly in the moons newspaper for some scheme or other, not often having the chance to meet up and coming fashion designers Jocelyne almost wordlessly pulled the two men into the buggy. "Which one of you two is the Maniac?" The American asked without any trace of subtlety in his question. The two spacesuits behind him that were arm in arm both pointed at him. "Wow I have to get a pic of this, I mean you are a slaughterer dude." Suddenly the lumineers started to play and the Maniac wondered how much was shared between the universes.

"Wow you have groupies!" Said 20 Steve. "Great." Said Jocelyne. "Brilliant." Said 20 Steve. However the Maniac beat them to the punch.

"Yeah I know, this gets better."

MOONLIGHT SONATAS

The Maniac sat on his bed thinking about his world, he liked 20, the people were wilder, less tamed than any he had met so far, but with a gentility to them that struck him harshly, the innocence of these people lunged almost venomously into his mind like an arrow shot by a marksmen, he felt dulled by the stupidity in 21. Yet the kid with her hands on her hips had asked him why? And here in 20 he couldn't logically explain it, raining death on your opponents was viewed as silly. The others Steve's and the Stephanie were like him treading psychological water here. The women were pretty much equal in every way to their male counterparts and the lack of that divisional element was equally confusing to him as it was to the Steve from Zero. Yet 20 Steve had almost innocently said to him. "We need some alone adult time." And unceremoniously left him with Jocelyne as the two raced giggling like kids for their quarters. Not one person batted an eyelid but there was some laughter. His room was next to theirs, he could hear them pillow talking away incoherently through the walls. As the Maniac sat back and watched the rocks of the moon through the sealed window, he wasn't paying them any attention, lost in his thoughts he drifted through the chain of his ex lovers, yes he had loved a Jocelyne in his twenties but he had let that drift sharply away from him. Many had come and gone, and they were now blurring through his lonely mind.

"Stop thinking." He said coldly to himself and the empty room, but his mind drifted beyond lovers to his childhood and with it he remembered Saigon as it had once been called. Loss and waste had

paralleled his formative years, light too like a liar had been a salvation to his battered mind as he struggled with people's and environments, bullets at least were mindless, unlike the person pulling the trigger, yet despair, desperation of a permanent style, that had been the enemy, the real trapdoor of it all, despair can and will kill a complex brain, the inevitable is in that struggle as logic collides with reality and any truth you had could be as dissolvable as Alka Seltzer. So the mind seeks it's Liberty, especially when economic and militarised logics collide, the Maniac could liken his childhood self to a meteorite, impacting upon a planet, his gentle streak had caused him nothing but pain, yet now, having embraced his pseudo Hollywood birthright, he was still facing the irrefutable stupidity of human emotional logic.

Yet light had revealed much beauty to him, even clotting blood can be beautiful when framed right and bathed in the right kind of light, but light was neutral, a treacherous cop out of a trick, or had he betrayed light, looking at the Luna surface he could see the directness of light, almost laughing he was amazed to remember how visual a being he had been, yet now, now instead of revelations, light mocked his mind, and his eyes were tired and torn by it all, it was true to say that he was a traitor, but as to what he was betraying, couldn't answer you, yes he betrayed himself, and the universe, and his own species. His blinded DNA sang for such, as true treachery was in the delusional, and a thin fraying smile graced his lips, slight, missable, but within himself he felt the conclusion, yes it was time to kill the politicals. Politicals, people ludicrously believed in, trusted despite the almost continual lies, yes they would have a wake up when he returned to 21. He slept brokenly, dreaming of Nguyen and the Nieuport bridge.

Maria sat cross legged on her bed, her fingers playing with Fawkes ears as she thought, the dog snored softly, almost inaudibly, his paws twitched occasionally, yet Maria was lost, she shuddered inwardly as the memory of the tanks hit her, she had never even discharged her service side arm before that day, the fifty calibre machine gun bullets had splintered almost exploding as they impacted, shoes scattered amongst the dying, and like a snapshot of a colour slide she couldn't shake the impact that it had had on her memory. Jocelyne had picked up on it, as had many others, yet it was her Doppelgänger in 20 that had shaken her from the fears, this other Maria, was a cop, at a very different version of Interpol, she was a child protection officer, and she had offered Maria a job, here, in 20. The Maniac, even though she loved things about him would, without any doubt go down shooting, yet here, Maria could jump ship, she knew she could never serve under her ex masters again, the system was as morally bankrupt as many of those it protected were.

Yet here her role would be the same but very different, she thought of the long chat in the shuttles cockpit about it all with Jocelyne, 20's legal system was almost arrogant in its literal approach to law and order, as 20 Steve would have laughed with pride at his conviction record, everybody in 20 was arrested at some point, but if you could validate your illegality with valid reasons, the chances are you could get away with anything except violence and murder. Violence and murder or oppressions or bodily harm, these had the highest of sentences, it wasn't tolerable, and when it came to children, never tolerable. There was an island prison for child abusers, they were left there, for life, the community they created was monitored, even a TV programme was live fed from it, but they could never leave. Accidents happen but if a child was hurt deliberately you were out of society globally, there were men on the island that had held positions of rank, left there, gone, with no way back, Jocelyne who was a member of the French communist party and fairly liberal hadn't even batted an eye at Maria's disbelief of the sentence. "Why does it shock you, I mean how do you deal with them in 21?"

Maria had been part way through explaining how ill the abusers were when 20 Steve had wandered into the conversation, the hippy snapper who thought everything was beautiful, suddenly swore. "Let me get this straight, your world punishes the poor, and those unlucky enough to be on wrong side of the capitalist system, but you Molly coddle your kiddy fiddlers." He had laughed menacingly when he said that, and Maria had realised how important it was to protect the children on 20 to the people of 20. "Fuck that! If by action or inaction you harm a child your a cunt and unworthy of anything but your lunch, sterilise the bastards and ship em to the island, and Maria if I ever went as nuts as they have then ship me there straight away." Jocelyne had added an "Amen" there but as they were both atheists Maria had been caught off guard by it. She had been caught off guard by the way the law operated in 20, even her crimes could have been defended, as the system in play in 21 was nuts and therefore the Maniac and his accomplices were tolerated, unless she had harmed a child, In which case she would have been sterilised and sent to the island, she thought of Steve's crimes, in 20 he had first been arrested for sabotaging loggers trucks in Australia, the deaf 13 year old Steve child had defended himself and made a point that he was diametrically opposed to any "fucker" that felt profiting at the loss of a rain forest was acceptable. The judge had laughed, according to 20 Steve's version and sentenced him to junior park ranger training, Jocelyne had rolled her eyes and said he had been in the news papers for that stunt. Beaming with pride Steve read off a long list, including breaking into the European Parliament to find evidence of corruption, and even though the evidence he had found was in itself inadmissible, he had gotten away with that one, in fact if Maria's math was right, 20 Steve would have spent about thirty two years in prison if he had been in 21.

Jocelyne had a slightly different path, having never been arrested, but she had been caught shoplifting when she was a child, however because she had been hungry when she stole the food she had been advised to eat it by the shop keeper in question. Maria was stunned by it all, yet here she could go anywhere on the planet, even wars couldn't be fought if children were about, and that gave her the biggest of shocks when 20 Steve had told her of 20's wars, he had covered a lot of them and they were all fought in the wildernesses or some of the abandoned cities or islands, the British and French had beaten Hitlers armies at the third battle of Waterloo, and strangely the war in Vietnam seemed to have been an honourable one. Yet Steve said they were all a waste of time really, Israel was a mixed nation, as were most in 20. Line em up and play strategy, some even have even numbers, but they are a waste of time. She sat looking at the moon, and wondered at the possibility of a life here, an escape from the madness of 21.

THE PLASMA PARTY IN STOKE NEWIGTON

The maniac had taken to the M2 carbine with a surprising enthusiasm, the smaller bullets and the light weight of it combined with its perfect balance, and like the icing on a psychotic cake the razor sharp bayonet fixture was to his mind a perfect close range weapon, with his pockets stuffed with banana shaped magazines that were taped together, he looked down at the blood that dripped wax like from the blade, it had happened fast, in a lift. The woman lay twisted in the fluorescent light, as the pool collected at his feet, the man, he had reached for his side arm, but like a contorted fool in a shadow theatre the blade had blundered into his lungs, yet either by fear or physical paralysis the man lay immobile, his goldfish eyes pleading dumbly to the metallic ceiling, as the maniac searched the woman's corpse. The flavours of her life were reflected by the objects she had upon her, a jumbled and haphazard selection of items that had obviously had some use when she had had a pulse, yet now seemed as dazzlingly empty as her eyes did. Possessions, tools of our lives, but what part did they play in death, her lungs breath cut short by a bayonet, the lipstick still freshened upon

her lips, he found the items he needed and gazed at this leader of an oblivion machine, her perverted view of democracy had lead her to this meeting, but the moon was still with him, the soft quiet of the stars were like him asleep, a long distance denial of the burning orbs of energy they were. Yet distant suns could not have conceived a fate a cruel as this woman's had been.

He leant back against the wall looking at her, her life had been locked on its trajectory like some predetermined rocket, she had embraced a corrupted system as opposed to attempting to change it, embracing it she had become essential to it, this corporate lobbyist had the access, and as is the nature of all of this networking the maniac now had her book and her laptop. Yet the mans eyes gazed emptily at him, dumb with empty shock without pleading they stared, his laboured breathing didn't empower the Maniac, this bodyguard had failed, and recognising the most wanted fugitive in the world he lay powerless unable to stop him. The maniac didn't like pain, and he looked at the man, then spoke. "If you want me to end it I will, but you will probably not make it anyway." The man didn't say a thing just stared. Maybe the moon had rubbed off but here the Maniac faltered, made the first of this days many mistakes, letting the man live he stepped from the lift, a woman screamed, a man stumbled backwards as the Maniac paused in the smallish lobby, noticing the sunlight breaking through and glancing against the wooden panels, then he walked slowly away from the building holding the Wooden carbine which slapped against his thighs as he moved.

The moon was very much on his mind, Maria had stayed in 20, the cop had copped out back to the cops, like that woman in the lift, Maria was enslaved by her education, cornered by logic and ensnared by her morality, she too was unable to rise to the actions that needed to happen to bring change. Freedom. The Maniac felt the thought tumble mirthfully in mind, he wasn't fighting for freedom, not that this was a fight, no he wanted an evolution, a change, an end to the status of Capitol, the death of money, the end of this, whilst that was only a part of his equation, the real truth was in the environment, he knew that, he knew the critters were important, he knew that the air that he breathed was too, yet even that was second hand and full of the thrift store bi products of the internal combustion engine.

He realised that he wanted a lot of what 20 had, he wanted it for 21, but the wildernesses were being demolished, the world as it had become would be barely recognisable to anyone a hundred years ago, the Amazon was gone, the trees were disappearing at the same time that the emissions escalated, and as the polluted mixtures rolled globally in the air and the sea, he knew that the eco systems could take little more, yet that was what humanity in its blinded chase for the bottom line offered, just more and more emissions, burnt entire rain forests to produce profitable palm oils, whilst they scapegoated populations of people and waged a war that oppressed all but the strongest. He had photographed it, the poverty, the refugees harpooned by a cycle of violence and economy, caught in the bitterest logic as the sea rose around them, as the heat had hit, the Dutch had suffered a lot as Europa disappeared beneath the slumbering and relentless waters, as the oceans rose then with a humorous attack the Gulf Stream itself buckled, shrunken, the once mighty conveyer of oceanic energy began to slow, and with that the maniac looked at the light, the orange had become a new norm, the skies still blue, had evolved into a statement of mans profits.

This was the world of 21, as an unplottable climate left any navigation of the worlds weather an excessive exercise in futility, briefly he thought of the old woman he had met years back, this climate scientist had warned them all, with others, but like a broken puppet her logic had fallen on political ears, she had watched them playing with fire an ice, and even now as the bronchitic coughing sang from children's lungs, the industries still persisted, still threw the same chemistry into the mix. Even she had become silent and stupefied by them, and the Maniac stiffened, felt himself freeze in his bones when he realised he couldn't kill enough of the profiteers to make a

difference, he gazed about him, feeling the listless insanity of all the vehicles that relentlessly ploughed every road on the planet, he watched them, realising the scale of his fight, was he supposed to take them all out?

Distracted as he was he sat at a bus stop, not that there were buses anymore, he sat Focused inwardly, unaware of the encircling policemen, oblivious to them as Stoke Newington high street emptied around him. Lost he thought of the lifeless moon, then thought of the Earth becoming like that, that was the near future here in 21. The sniper positioned herself and lost as I was drifting in and out of the Maniacs broken mind I realised the danger. The Maniacs eyes were closed as he faced skywards feeling the warmth of the light gracing through his eyelids to his retina. She missed by millimetres. He lunged behind the wall, gripping the carbine, the snipers bullet sprayed brick and mortar into the air. I sensed his tiredness, felt a bitter pointlessness that like a tide on a slowing river slipped relentlessly into his minds eye, felt his realisation of the futility of man, the stupidity of them, then the admission that the scum like capitalists had won, forced his actions and by their actions created him, a smile graced his lips, the world had been born and man had evolved to see no other way than profit, none, he tried to glance at his darting and zig zagging opponents, but the brick exploded more dust near his face, etching his chin with tiny spots of blood.

Neoklis saw him and stepping from the car he opened the boot, pulling an AK74 from it, then with a shoulder bag of ammo he advanced on the policemen firing short bursts, one tumbled as his leg shredded flesh and bone, then the Maniac broke from cover firing rapidly towards these toads of the bankers, with an invigorating rush I felt the insanity rising, his mind broke its banks and almost blank he became the weapon. The singular nature of his thought as two of these trout like protectors fell in front of him, and then in the middle of the square he squatted sighting down the irons of his barrel at the marksman, she was dressed in the black garb of her trade, and as both Focused on the other Neoklis spewed shell and shot towards the rest, yet the two minds were uniquely Focused. Sex or survival makes the human mind like that. Hers was awash in calm, the maths was locked within her and had become physical, whilst the Maniac moved his mind and body like a wave, and a life spent behind the camera lens locked onto this single target, and his shot fired, the bullet almost slowly arched at the target behind the car, and her eyes widened as she knew it came, the helmet took the force, she fell to her knees in a wave of death like dizziness, then lay still upon the floor immobile.

The pair moved in the escalating firefight down the street, silently, at one point they were back to back facing different enemies, the Maniac thought of Fawkes briefly, hoping he was happy in 20, but the firing was getting heavier and the volume of the reinforcing police had become unstoppable, until finally the pair were forced by the sheer weight of numbers into the small graveyard at the top of the street by an open park, then they forced their way through the doors of Stoke Newington church, firing almost belatedly they fell into the dusted chapel, empty and long from use, the walls absorbed the shots from the panicking police, but as the pair sat on opposite parts of the large room they realised in their own ways that this was the end game. Neoklis thought of the dead, lost to his reflected crime scenes, almost professionally he could see the pictures of himself scattered on a detectives desk, the math was inevitable that they would die, and the crime scene would be here. It was odd to be at the centre of the scene before it happened and finally he laughed, brokenly, yet not once did the mans mind think of surrender. Whilst I who could have intervened didn't, and the reality is that I knew this was the place.

Yet in the darkest turbulence the Maniacs mind still sought an avenue of escape, still fought for his life, almost incapable of accepting his fate, the man would fight to his last, but never acknowledge the impossibility of this precarious position. The tidal wave of his mind surged, venomously like

toxic radioactive dust he hoped his enemies would choke upon it, yet the moon, for some reason that had softened his rages, and finally he looked at Neoklis who was laughing like some crazed statue. "What's raised your comedies Mate."

"Photos, we will be crime scene photos, I always knew I would be one one day, just didn't know it this morning." The pair laughed together and the maniac put a shot out of the window at the distant figures, feeling satisfied as they scattered like bowls for cover. "We should attack, because when they assault we will go down just as quick." The Maniac nodded listening to Neoklis, as the police weaved their way around the Chapel, and finally the Flying Squad arrived, the best of the Mets crime fighters backed up by almost every firearms team in London. She though having regained her balances was stalking shakily to the rear of the chapel, he had shot her in the head, her helmet still had the slug sticking in it, and she lay down in the long grass next to a large grave stone, the words had long ago faded and we're now illegible, yet she wondered how the person had died whilst she knew it didn't matter. Yet she heard their laughter through the thick walls, and realising they were going to attack she stiffened, the bolt action rifles sites were Focused on the door ahead of her.

Trying to organise the chaotic scene the police were also trying to seal off the scene, yet cameras and journalists had arrived many had even taken better spots than the yards marksmen, and from around the city crowds began to walk and mass towards the Clissold park area, from the nearby estate music began to boom loudly, it was a slow Rolling Stones cover, Sympathy for the devil, and the maniac laughed. "At least they are playing my song." He glanced warmly to Neoklis and the two men embraced, "Sorry mate but our run ends here" Neoklis slapped the maniacs shoulders, and the pair checked their clips, then without much but a raging scream they ploughed from the Churches broken door firing, in the bright sunlight the Maniac saw a dragon fly, he remembered it.

Like a flash his thought chewed through his life's highlights, he had stared into the eye of a wild killer whale, he had seen a transparent dragon flies heart beat, watched a flower tumble slowly from his wifes hair as they had lain in the damp grass of a park, he felt his sons first grip upon his index finger, almost a minute old and he felt that, he thought of Saigon, as his gun blazed blindly, missing its mark, he saw her, watched as her shot tore through Neoklis's heart, saw his bullet in her helmet, and raised to face her as her hands blurred working the bolt of her rifle, he remembered the broken glass that had flown alongside him when the bomb had gone off as a child, the reflections glancing his mind, the lost misery of the war, and then almost unaware of her he thought of his son. With one shot his mind went blank.

FALLING OUT OF FAVOURS

Cafes conform throughout the universes, 20 Steve was taking shelter from his life in one, the Rusty Bike cafe was compact, and the corrugated iron roof was nice, he was thinking about going to 21 again, but really didn't see the point, it exhausted his mind when he thought about it too. Which was why he was in hiding in a cafe drinking a smooth black coffee whilst trying to deny that he would go back. Editors wanted him to go back but nope he didn't want to, the dark artists of his worlds news desks hadn't met a child starving with hunger, and he had, in 21. Almost drowning in a sea of self pity he sat watching a horse feeding at one of the many troughs in the roads of 20, secured to a lamppost the mare drank and twitched her tail, he smiled inwardly, because he knew in the tech frenzied minds of 21 this would be a shock, near the horse his bicycle was also chained to another lamppost, he liked horses, loved the fact at his space pilot Mrs liked them and looked after their family trap. With a happy thought of his tumble love, Steve stood and smiled, knowing he would never return to 21, even the thought was a relaxing one to him.

Dodging the horses he cycled through the streets of his city, heading for home, sunlight fell upon the cobbles almost lazily, nearing his house he remembered he had promised his son a Fubar, so pulling over he laughed in the small but cluttered corner shop with the owner, then spotting some very fresh plumbs he grabbed a bagful. At his front door Steve pulled one out and sank his teeth into it whilst glancing at his watch, the taste was succulent, the texture was almost perfect and he knew they had been imported from his version of Devon. Then seeing the dragon flies were out and about he sat on the house steps and watched them whilst waiting for Jo to come home from school with all the inevitable cursing that involved. For some reason his house attracted Blue Dashers dragonflies, not any other species visited it, he knew it was the ponds from the woods behind him, absorbed as he was albeit with jealousy as he would secretly love to move like a dragon fly, he didn't see Jo arrive only when his hands were on his shoulder did he sense his son.

Resting a shoulder on his the boy announced almost proudly that "Mrs Bridger was a complete slave driving swine daddy." Steve laughed knowing his son wondered what crime he had committed to be sentenced to 8 years of schooling. Which he pronounced skulling, but Jo forgot all his dismay when he tucked into the plumb bag almost nose first. "Can we go tree climbing." He asked and Steve stood up and opened the front door, hearing the reggae thumping from the radio. "Oh is that the scientist?" Recognising the reggae tune Steve nodded a reply to Jo, and looped the bag strap over the stairway, "Come up to see you tell you I'm sorry don't know how lovely you are are are." Jo sang grabbing the plumbs and heading for the kitchen. Steve followed, happily realising Jocelyne was also in the house, when he heard the muffled laughter from the pair of them steve smiled to himself. The small house was cluttered with the haphazard necessities of the three lives that collided there, Jo with his child collection impacted with Jocelynes very feminine space woman chic, whilst the photographer slob just threw bits of work all over the place, however in this marvellous chaos a family system of order did exist. Jocelyne kissed him but laughed when she saw the plumbs, and pointed to a larger bag of them on the large table top.

Picture if you will this scene multiplied exponentially around all of 20, strangely domestic life was more important here, home wasn't where you hid from the world, it was where you existed more in touch with it. Yet for Steve the two of them were paradise as were the dogs, the horses and even the dragon flies. The smaller global population helped but mostly it was a collective concept of not wasting anything including a human life. To Steve this was a paradise,a paradise he woke up in a lived in. Freedom is in the mind and here was freedom, freedom for a young boy to consider his sentence whilst his mother flew spaceships and his father took pictures and talked some deep scientific shit part of the time. He awoke the next day refreshed and well slept, whilst Jocelyne snored gently into her pillow. The early morning world was one that Steve rarely visited, but here he was on one of the strange days that he awoke voluntarily before six, looking in on his son he saw him asleep and also snoring not so gently into a stuffed giraffe comfort toy, smiling steve strolled to the kitchen and made a coffee, then sat back in front of his pad to check the news updates. Seeing nothing of use to him upon the feeds and having no bookings till the afternoon, he sat back and started to write.

Happiness is not something structural.

Sipping at the coffee he glanced at the sentence, then spotted the robin red breast singing from the open window, which resulted in his spotting the upturned garden chair and the with a smile he laughed to himself. The Badgers had been out and about again last night, which was no surprise as

they always went looking for a partner at this time of the year.

Happiness not is a back garden badger orgy. He typed.

Looking at he words he had just written he briefly wondered if there was a good song in either sentence, fortunately Steve had the poetic skills of a badger so probably not. Imagining badger poetry briefly he looked away gazing at the morning light from the window, one of the dogs Schro haphazardly blundered in to the kitchen and drank from the bowl on the floor, she was getting old and greying yet even here her eyes blazed with a sheepdog intelligence at him, so he played briefly with her ears and finally she went of back to Jo's room where she slept protectively every night.

Happiness is a wagging tail and a wet nose.

His finger hovered over the delete button. The words were silliness, random silliness at that. Then he read the first sentence. Pausing in thought he started to type, the silliness of the flow of his mind was lost in the fonts of the keyboard.

Happiness is not structural, it is a flowing wave like motion, that depends upon the viewers mindset translating the experiences, attracting the similar whilst avoiding that which is deleterious to it. Like a deafened pair of ear drums, happiness is blind, but sees everything, editing out that which makes it saddened.

Sitting back in the chair he knew 21 was a complication, a stupidity, and stupidity was to be avoided, had to be. However he was happy here, happy within himself despite his many regrets and the many trials of his life he was happy. Then thinking about when he had been deaf he smiled.

Saddening things should be avoided, but stupidity is sadness made flesh, deafness if you are a bitter and twisted parody of a person reliant upon the respect of others must be hell, unhappiness could be your own reflection, yet if you do not rely on others for your self esteem, if you are happy in your own bubble then deafness is a kind of paradise, an ignorant one maybe but ignorance is correctable. Maybe happiness is ignorance? No it never could be. 21 is all about ignorance, it is destroying that place, and on the scale of it, I have met none that were happy there. No, happiness is not a place nor is it a destination, it may have symptoms, they are probably beneficial, but happiness flows like life and light, it just is, so why debate happiness itself, and is it just guilt at what 21's fate is that fuels these words. I think I am happy by nature, but 21 just made me sad, yet here at home with love and light and crazed horny badgers I feel happy. No matter how I choose to view it. 21's environmental, political, and economic woes are not my problem, acknowledging that truth though, is hard. Because 21 is like an isolated deaf mind full of nothing but rock......

He sat back and looked at the toy laying randomly upon the floor, a pair of Jocelynes shoes were placed in the corner, whilst he could only see one of his trainers, wondering where he had thrown the other one he smiled. Yes that was more important than 21, he picked up the leaves that were piled in the middle of the kitchen table, Jo had collected some when they had been climbing the big oak in the fields by the pond, holding one to the light Steve smiled as the morning sun light broke through the slowly decaying veins of the browning leaf.

ZEROS AND ONES

"Look this god concept is like the mathematical zero, it is a balance that's all, and in 21 it has been miss applied en mass to confuse pretty much any issue with its presence." Zero Steve was listening to the radio in his kitchen, Jeanette was flopped in the sunlight naked and reading. The light broke cleanly upon their large balcony, he stood up and watched her for a while, the breeze blew through her hair, strands of it moved independently with it. Then she sat suddenly looking to the radio, he turned to it too. "Cornered by the police forces of 21 the Maniac was killed in a bitter gun fight............."

BLOGS OF VIOLENT POTENTIAL

What is man or woman but an upright walking mammal, a primate, you could claim we are one hell of a primate by looking at our achievements, but one that falls far short in our applications of our concepts and our numerical bliss in embracing the tech we create. The scale of human endeavour is impressive if you look to the stars you may even see a future playground for humanity, or maybe they scare you, but in some of our more arcane arts you see humanity at its best because we are brilliant at finding reasons not to act. Economics is a great example, picture the stars or the local planets, and know if it's left to economics we will never visit them. The Kuiper belt is awash in minerals and ores we could use, and we have the know how to reach it and to mine them, we don't have to trash a perfectly habitable planet either, however we never will reach them. Why? Because we can't afford too. The realities of modern economics are that it is not an empowering or an enabling force, in fact economics tells you what you cannot do. Which for a system that is based on the psychological value of hypothetical potentials across the entire spectrum of human societies is particularly impressive, what makes it more impressive is that economics itself as we use it doesn't exist. It's not real, gravity for instance is measurable and quantifiable with or without human psychology. Whereas economics is not anywhere near as quantifiable as Gravity is because it all hinges on confidence and patterns of behaviour. Yet this system is only one possible system, there are many other options, and many other systems. Ideas and concepts that don't sentence large portions of your species to poverty, and also enable humanity to go the the stars. Sadly we are all trapped here by this economic expression and none of us can afford to step away from it. The word farcical comes to mind here, as does the word tragedy.

20 Steve sat back as he read the Maniacs words, they were from his blog, and in 21 the Internet was pretty abused, in 20 free information was what it was about, free communication too, but in 21 it was more or less advertising and propaganda, reinforcing political and economic models, it was so far away from the ideal that he knew it was hard to accept it, in fact in 21 the people were locked away because of their needs, working every day for the bread that fed them and paying for the shelters they all lived in. To 20's eyes it all looked like being an indentured slave. Everyone in 20 did two days work every two weeks, socially they worked to clean streets, or handle other tasks that everybody relied on. Steve glanced away from the keyboard knowing that the absence of sanity in 21 was the real problem. Yet he was also summoned to cover a story in Zero, which was an equally criticisable utopia, but then who was he to tell anyone how to live. It was miraculous enough that one maniac had seen the bitter reality of his world, the clock told him he should go, so getting up he cycled to the Holborn dimension portal, and there he strolled into the large circular room above the tube station. Each of the doors was numbered, being 21 they were solid wooden doors with the numbers carved into them. 0. He twisted the large nob and walked through.

"Credulity like your nose lengthens as you get older, it gets stretched until it snaps and you are left

with bugger all options but deafness if you want to survive them." The man sat chatting to another Steve as he entered, another Jeanette sat listening, and seeing him stood up and strolled over. Then hooking her arm in his, she tugged him gently over to the other side of the circular room. "And I should know I stretched it to the max when I was in charge." Zero Steve's face didn't give any impression other than massive interest in the mans words, whilst 20 steve pondered who this vaguely familiar man was, 20 Steve was used to Jeanette by now and the two were he felt rather good friends, even Jocelyne got on with her which was nice, he wasn't surprised when she pulled his head down to her height and whispered in his ears.

"We have a politician and an expert who is finally talking with us, he was a prime minister in Britain, and also a Middle East envoy, his name is Tony Blair." Steve winced when he placed the mans name, in 20 he was a treacherous skunk of a political, constantly sniping irrelevancies at any one with a camera. Jeanette having no idea of the political context smiled enthusiastically at him, whilst inwardly he cringed at the thought of another Blair, then briefly wondered if there was a universe where politics hadn't been invented, but realised it would probably be one where humanity hadn't evolved. "It's a bit of a breakthrough as he is a bit of a global player in international politics apparently, also he understands the unique economics of the issues we are facing in 21." Steve looked at her, realising that she was serious, and also decided to research the man in question. "He just appeared in Cyprus and came to talk with us, no invite or anything, just showed up and he is the first political in 21 to do that." Steve smiled to her hoping he had masked the sinking feeling in his stomach as she spoke. "It's a breakthrough as he is willing to be our voice in 21."

Steve looked at the man, who sat with a self assured air that couldn't come naturally, he had gotten used to the brinkmanship of 21's politicals, the American ones had not even negotiated, just told them to leave, then behind the scenes they had attempted to purchase the science that was freely offered, it had been the same story with all of them except the Chinese, who had at least sent a representative to negotiate for the goods, Zero Steve had just given the same data to him that had been given to the others, right at the beginning everyone had talked but now having the breakthroughs they had ignored them, even the EU politicals had done the same. Yet the British and the Americans were uniquely malleable and open to bribes that were not bribes, with puckered up lips the men had secured the data and then made it secret, without any explanation, they were securing their personal futures whilst it seemed ignoring what was for the greater good. Looking at this latest man to show up, 20 Steve just saw a salesman.

"I want to explore the other universes further away, but apparently that is not advised, so can I ask why?"

Jeanette paused in mid breath looking at him with a tightened eyes, then she gently pulled him from the room into the outside world. Snow fell around them as the pair walked from portal. "Particle compression is the official reason why you cannot go." 20 Steve already knew this, but I shall explain it to you. Particles form atoms, but the vast majority of any particles structure is nothing, it's empty, I could describe them like a bottle with nothing in it, but it's more than that, the bottle I describe would have air in it, it is and energy, but most of a particle and by inference everything bigger than a particle, is composed vastly of nothing. Listen if this confusing, I do apologise because at the level of this story you don't actually have to understand the structure of any of these things, for you it is the equivalent of us not knowing how Bumble Bees fly, they shouldn't, but they still fly in spite of our mutual ignorance of the how they manage it. However if the particle is vastly composed of nothing, the it can be compressed for energy or expanded as a way of dissipating the

energies too. That is particle compression and in a number of ways the universes spin at slightly differing rates but further from the centre, well things get too fat for a person or a machine to survive.

Putting aside that everything you have ever experienced is effectively composed mostly of nothing is almost as brain damaging as everything being composed from the non causal quantum foam that is within all, yes an emergent time engine, but the further from the centre the more fat it is, and consider this, zeros one true expert on all this literally disappeared in the universe 33, dissolved would be the better description, but she is gone forever. The universe has very little to its name but it does use it well, but 20 Steve has an integrated idea to explore, and he is not going to 33 he wants to go to 24, which is as yet unexplored. I glanced at his thoughts, shared them with Jeanette, she smiled when she felt them. 20 steve thinks in pictures, he visualises his science in his own head, imagine a holographic representation of your thoughts and you see it, but Jeanette smiled gasping slightly as she saw his struggling model of the universe, her breath was clouding in front of her face as they walked through the snow to the diplomatic cafe. Imagine a swirl, energies flowing, and energising at the present but like a wave this model of everything flowed. His mind saw it wavelike, everything was a wave, even his ageing skin, and she gasped again feeling the strength of it.

"Is your Vee showing you my thoughts." Jeanette smiled, of all the Steve's she felt very close to 20, in some ways she felt more friendship for him than her husband Zero Steve. "I am glad he is as it will speed things up." The exchange was fast, she smiled and nodded to him.

"I will arrange it, but it's not why I am here." Imagine his mild confusion, I knew what was coming, but Jeanette didn't know how to pleasantly explain what he was there for. Finally she hooked her arm in his again and gently pulled him to a waiting trap. It was open topped but as usual 20 Steve spent precious minutes introducing himself to the shire horses that pulled it. Jeanette had chosen it for him, but as he fussed at the mare she fidgeted with a gentle frustration, wanting to get a move on, but as usual this man of a million deadlines almost casually took his time. Then with the clip clopping of hooves they were on their way. Her London flashed past them on this sharp snowing winters day, crisper air filled their lungs and the light shone faster, picture a perfect london, no relentless traffic, cycles, and often laughter hit him as he watched the city from the trap, then they had to slow and run the longer way round the pedestrianised areas, fished flopped from the Thames, leaping suddenly into view, and despite the rivers tidal muddiness the water was clear. She chatted here and there on this journey, hoping her nervousness was not showing. "Relax we are still British so not everything works all the time." He laughed nodding, and wondered what zeros Australia looked like.

Then the trap pulled into the hospital, it was a quiet place, and the pair walked through the reception, he followed whilst absorbing the overall order of is incredibly organised facility, pausing he knelt and took a photo of a very old man being cared for by a young nurse. "The elderly here have a dedicated set of careers for them, we have found it works better than medicine if there is a continuity to their care." Jeanette said and he nodded focused on the photo, mesmerised by the high sun light breaking through behind the two, the old man laughed and invited them into the room. Jeanette was about to apologise but Steve had already entered, he pulled the clockwork translator from his bag and wound it then placed it on the bedside table. Finally he was able to understand the older fella's words, whilst Jeanette was surprised as most people didn't bring a translator unit when they came from the other verses.

"Ah you must be the camera man from the other universe." The old man said offering his hand and as the two shook hands he smiled as he talked. "I was curious of you as in my day I too took pictures, but I worked in the holographic format."

"Oh hell no grandad I hate those holo things, so fake it's like a fraudulent reproduction of the world, gimme a good print any day." Jeanette sat down nearby whilst Steve spoke and the nurse nodded to her. "Next you will be telling me Zeros verbal journalism is better than the written word?"

The old man slapped his thigh and laughed. "Oh it most definitely is, and as for those amateurish prints you make, well they have no depth beyond there limited dimensions, which as any sane person will tell you is the weak point in such an ancient media format." The old mans eyes lit up.

"Ooh you didn't you actually didn't just challenge me did you, I mean you zero photographers talk big but you don't get it, my discipline freezes a moment, we don't time lag a holo whist relying on computers to fill the gaps, whereas your lot are just lazy."

The old man pulled a magazine from his lap, and flicked opening a holographic page, it was a shot of zero steve, he was arguing against holograms. "It's true all of it you are such throwbacks artistically that you cannot cope with any extra dimensions at all." The old man laughed as he spoke and Jeanette sat back watching the two argue bluster fully, as the old fella Henri showed Steve his work. It went back and forth between sarcasm and some quite deep visual concepts. After a half hour of it Steve noticed she was pointing at her watch and leant forwards and gave the old man a hug.

"Hey Pops I hope we can finish this argument sometime soon so I can prove to you the errors of your holographic ways." Henri laughed and gave Steve the finger. "Backatcha pops."

Jeanette hooked her arm in his again and pulled him from the room, hearing the laughter coming from behind them as they walked the spotless corridor. "Ok, this is where we have to get down to business." He nodded in reply to her words. "I won't tell you I will just show you, this may be a shock." She said at the lift door, showing some kind of watch ID to the guard armed with KO Amnesia gun. Then they stepped into the compact lift. Finally it opened to another guard who nodded to her, she stepped through and a medic strolled over to them, he gazed expressionlessly at Steve, then without a word walked in front of them to the large room. The world slowed down as he looked at the figure in the bed, tubes wired and writhed from his body as if he were made partly of metals and plastics. I for my part had kept my silent distance as with people it is better to let them reach some kind of conclusion before you destroy it. He gazed at the face and the turned away and left the room.

Jeanette followed him as he sat down on the floor in the well lit waiting area, finally after a long silence he spoke into his translator. "Why the fuck would you do that?"

"His wounds were dangerous but not necessarily fatal." She said.

"Give me a break he was shot by a speeding high velocity bit of metal." He paused slightly then with his index finger pointing at his forehead he looked at her sadly as he spoke. "In his head, fer crying out loud he was shot in the melon, right between the eyes, there's nothing left at home?"

"Yes but the damage can be fixed, the bullet severed some connections that are being regrown, his lungs were the biggest problem." She looked at him. He raised the camera to his eye and manoeuvred around the bed looking for a better angle. With whisper like click the rangefinder fired the frame, circling he took several more shots. Jeanette had found out in her dealings with this particular incarnation of the Steve's that a lot would be going on as he shot, in one way his camera could be likened to a child's teddy bear.

"Fixed, you say fixed, he was shot in the fucking head you can't fix that, what's in there won't be him." He scowled at the floor as he spoke, his mouth hung slightly and his right arm waved about.

"Like why the fuck would you do that, he is a psycho killer, why would you bring 21's noble bogie man maniac back to life are you fucking nuts, do you think you can control him, have you seen the aftermath of his shit, like corpses and screaming, why the hell would you do that?"

"Because we have given them cancer cures, technology, clean energy, and they have ignored it because of profits, and the one thing we can see from this complete failure is him, he has had an effect on them, we, you, all the verses are beaten in 21, and he may be the only chance we have to change that."

Steve looked at her, he understood her, his mind was coldly angry though. Angry to a temperature that was so cold it would have burned you. "Ok, so in 21 everything is conflict, all of it, and you think a." His eyes bulged as he searched for a word to fit holding both hands near his chin as he continued speaking. "Psycho killer freedom fighter can bring about a change in their mindsets. He can't. He just confirms every shitty lesson 21 has to offer, why the fuck would you guys see this as a possible solution?"

Jeanette could feel his anger but also a slight tinge of disgust in his words, so she thought a moment as the silence in the room stretched interrupted by an occasional beep from the tubular medical machinery attached to his head and body. "We haven't lost him in 2 they downloaded his conscious for research when he visited there, with you if you remember." 20 steve remembered the short but chaotic visit, the people of 2 were kind but like an extreme Buddhist variation. The visit though short had involved a meditative machine, he had met many of the ancestors, downloaded consciousnesses of the dearly departed. Creepy and exhilarating as that had been it hadn't smelled right to his mind. She pulled a pair of Chinese luck cats from her bag, one was gold the other was red, both once settled waved their left arms relentlessly at him.

"Ok, you may not like this next part one bit." She bit her lower lip and smiled as she said that.

Glaring at her he grunted and then said. "Really I mean what's not to like so far." His hand waved in the Maniacs unconscious direction.

"Well would you like to speak to him." He glanced at the luck cats, they were everywhere in twenty, in fact his own flat had one in every room, and one of the little statues hung in Jocelynes cockpits whenever she flew. With a sinking feeling he nodded to her. The red cat stopped waving its arm and spoke to him.

"Dude how are you doing?" "Great, brilliant, some may even say fantastic." 20 Steve said hollowly.

"Well on a scale of one to ten I would measure this meeting in negative numbers, I heard every word, psycho killer aside, I am currently alive and well and stored in a luck cat." Twenty Steve leant forwards, his nose was very close to the cats, and he saw a mechanical iris expand in its eyes as he glared at it. "If you are thinking about smashing this cat up its fine, I am a copy, and streaming my thoughts to a master file of myself as we speak."

Twenty stood up, bolt upright, and the turned his back on the cat and stalked towards Jeanette. "Did you make it psychic as well, like not content with creating a zombie, you actually have downloaded his consciousness into a luck cat statue."

"Oh chill the fuck out!" The gold cat said from the table. "You are a scientist and you wouldn't be objecting about this if you had done it would you?"

Twenty looked at her, then nodded in the direction of the gold cat. "You have a point, whoever you are?"

Jeanette stepped nervously backwards, eyes wide with stumbling humour she bit almost gnawed at her bottom lip and with a nervous laugh spoke rapidly blurting out at him. "We didn't know they did this in 2, um yeah, you see they download every visitor they have, I have a copy there of me." She said with her hands stretching and stressing nervously in front of her.

Ah the moments in human lives when realisations strike, some are welcome others are not. I was hitchhiking in 20 Steve's mind, he knew I was there, he had even struck a none interference deal with me, which not many people have even thought of trying, but I felt that moment with the golden cat, felt his mind stumble as the trapdoors of logic opened. Felt the fumbling OMG of the moment, the anger, the spittle of chaotic thought, the sudden urge to strangle a Buddhist, (which happens later in this story, but without strangulation.) Yes the man had a copy, the copy was in a golden luck cat, and because of 2's liberal laws there was nothing he could do about it. Let's face it if you split up with your other half on two, download an older version into a clone and don't make the same set of mistakes. They love cloning in 2, they download household pets to new bodies, and even claim that this continuous process has defeated death, which is randomly why they find themselves slightly isolated by the rest of the verses. One of them is currently several hundred years old, and Steve glared even more at everything.

"So I am a luck cat?" 20 Steve said, and Jeanette laughed again less nervously. He turned and walked out of the room. Jeanette grabbed both luck cats, and they rattled together as she walked rapidly after him.

"Well this is going well." The gold cat said from her fisted grip.

STAIRCASES AND THE ILLEGALITY OF COFFEE

The waiter looked sideways, the cafe was silent, 20 Steve sat down placing both cats in front of him on the table, then saw Jeanette again biting her lip and getting edgy. The waiter had heard of addicts before but in broad daylight. Jeanette was talking rapidly to the man, her voice was so fast the translating box couldn't keep up with her. Although the word coffee had come up. 20 Steve stared around him, the imperious looking old lady was obviously finding him contemptible for some social

reason, twenty didn't care. Suddenly the waiter stepped over to him. "Sir as you are a visitor I will forgive your error, but please be advised that caffeine is illegal here in Zero."

Twenty looked at him, his jaw dropped slightly, then with an exasperation at the way this day was unfolding, he let rip at everything he couldn't stand about Zero. "Are you shitting me, you can clone a brain and reanimate the freaking dead but I can't get a cup of freaking coffee?"

Jeanette shuffled between the two men, whilst the waiter with practiced patience responded. "The laws deny you the coffee sir, whilst the health issues from its intake have been in balance found to be negative, would you like some marijuana cakes and a cup of chai instead." Twenty looked at the gold cat. The gold cat laughed and then said.

"Mr waiter man, please never offer that man tea, he hates it, can't stand it, nor can I but I haven't got a digestive tract, so can you give him a beer or a sweetened fizzy lemonade?"

The waiter stumbled slightly gripping the chair next to the table, Jeanette leapt forwards putting her hand over the luck cats mouth. "Are you referring to processed sugar products, you savages, you have no idea what you are putting in your bodies, do you?" He looked at Jeanette but the old woman had had enough and was calling the constabulary. The red cat chose this moment to gleefully laugh. Zero Steve chose this moment to pick up the laughing red cat and throw it out of the window, it laughed as it fell, then hit the pavement and with some fizzing fuseable noises it was silent.

"Please my friend is visiting from the dimension called twenty, he does not know our laws." The waiter nodded and then walked away to wash his hands clean from the savage touch of contagion that these inferior models of humanity could have. The old woman huffed as she spoke to the operator.

"Yes they demanded coffee and then processed sugar and fermented alcohol." She paused as Jeanette squirmed in front of her. "No they are still here and one of them threw an ornament out of a window and that could have hurt someone."

The gold cat announced suddenly. "Chill out Grandma, you may enjoy it."

"No operator that was one of the ornaments talking, yes I do feel threatened." She continued talking to her hand.

"Your having a laugh, scared of a four inch tall luck cat, really I must be a luck tiger." Twenty Steve flicked the gold cat over as it spoke. "Go on throw me out the window I dare yah. I too have copies made."

Jeanette's hand started to ring, Twenty Steve stared at it. "Sub dermal communication implant." She said looking at him with her dumbest possible expression. "Hello." She said holding her hand to her ear. "Yes constable I am already at the scene, it is just a misunderstanding with one of our visitors." She paused listening. "No he is from twenty where they do drink coffee and beers." Another pause, and Steve watched as she managed to finally look frazzled by her day. "Well yes of course I have had the odd cup of coffee when I am there I am in charge of anthropological verse studies so I have to." Steve had the distinct memory of her guzzling gallons of coffee when she visited, in fact he

rather pictured people in zero swimming in the stuff. "Of course not, I wouldn't ever touch processed sugars, that's absurd to suggest." Steve thought of the photo evidence he suddenly had in his possession, heaped tea spoons being poured into a coffee cup, for the first time today he smiled.

A man and a woman walked into the cafe, they wore baby blue uniforms, and their equipment belts were as unmistakeable as the large badges on there shirts. Steve smile grew wider as he raised the camera to his eyes. "Yes two officers are here to diffuse the situation I shall talk with them."

"Oh look the filth has arrived, we can all relax now." The gold cat shouted loudly as it rolled on the table. Steve picked it up by one ear and smiled at it. Broodily contemplating if he himself was as irritating as is copycat was he looked up at Jeanette who was waving the cops a farewell.

"I have to ask you again how the fuck you could see this as a solution?" 20 steve said safely aware that nobody could understand him, then realised that the translator would repeat his words exactly he looked back down at the cat. The old woman had had enough and stood huffily to leave, her expression said drop dead far more eloquently than any of my words can.

Jeanette turned to him, scowling. "Because he had them stalled, not quite on the run, but stalled which is more than all of our cures and tech achieved, so he is a solution." Jeanette said this as gently as possible, even though her mood disputed her tone.

She did say it gently, she had even slowed down her speech to a point where he could have understood her without the little clockwork box. Yet what 20 Steve is about to say is vitally important, in writing terms it's a plot development, a tool of words to evolve the story in a different direction. I will tell you that what does evolve is inevitably doomed to fail, but the Maniac does abstractly save the day, and the act of me a virus telling you what is coming in such an illusive way is called a plot reveal. The fact that you know there is a happy ending in this twisted narrative literal effort of word smithing, is only matched by the doubt that this could be a happy ending only in 21. Which sadly it is, but victory is within the grasp of the other universes, for a short while at least. 20 Steve is speaking through a mangled logic when he speaks as he has just had a rough day. What he said is.

"Ok, but why do we need copycats of the fruitcake when we have twenty odd Steves that could do exactly the same thing but without the predictable or inevitable bloodbath." Twenty Steve actually had a raised eyebrow as he said that. Jeanette was stood speechless, briefly struck dumb, she sat down finally, and the cats eyes darted between the pair of them, Jeanette's mouth formed to speak but nothing came out. "Look." He said clicking his fingers. "The psycho has his point, but he is killing everyone involved, OK?" She nodded as he frowned at her. "So let's evolve the plan using tech and stealth and instead of killing them all, let's kidnap them and exchange them for the doubles we have here?"

"I get it we replace their ratbags with our angels and their psycho with you." The luck cat said rapidly. "Or is that me."

Steve smiled at the cat cruelly. "That could work, we download me into the psycho." He pointed at the cat, Jeanette was stumped by the cold logic but saw the ideas merits. "I hadn't thought of that possibility Cat Steve well done." The cats arm shot back and forwards to indicate excitement.

"I like it n I could have legs again." Said Cat Steve. "I can take photos again." His arm blurred in its

motions. "When can we start?"

Picture that cafe, where the plan evolved and think of our heroes, out as they are to save 21. Twisted as this plot will get, what truths of it have paralleled your reality, wherever your reality may be, and although reality is by it's nature malleable, that is the question you have to ask yourself. But. You shall have to wait for the Man Who Loved Light to arrive. But. He, as you will discover, is nothing in comparison to the Man Who Was Light.

The End. For now at least.

But, Stay tuned for.

The Man Who Loved Light.

