 
# The Best Scandal Ever

### Ina Disguise

### Copyright 2013 Ina Disguise

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The Best Scandal Ever

It was hot in the slate blue classroom, even for California. Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat, adjusting the blue woollen poncho he habitually wore during his public events at his damp neck. Metal chairs ground against the linoleum floor as his audience prepared to leave, clutching folders and now lukewarm water bottles.

He used a finger to lift a blonde tendril of his long hair over the neckline from where it was sticking to his skin, rubbed his chin, carefully avoiding smearing the coconut oil that concealed the worst of the sun damage and scoped the room. Four, maybe five possibles?

People often commented on his youtube channel that he was clearly feeling the cold because of his vegan diet, but the reality was that Sam the diet expert was fat. He had been even fatter before he had given up food but even on a liquid diet – the fact could not be escaped. Sam, the leonine and now rather eccentric last baby of a plump late mother, was born to be deliciously cuddly.

At school as a teenager, he had been teased mercilessly about his weight and manic inability to stop talking. His short neck made this look worse than it really was. He hid his pain by out-talking and at least trying to out-perform his classmates, and apart from the occasional spiteful exchange with the more popular blue eyed Aryan jock loving girls, managed to escape the worst effects on his self-confidence, enjoying his college years as a musician before the plane crash stymied his post-college career in the uber-masculine world of railway construction. As such, a formerly corpulent and over talkative hippy geek became the internationally famous yippy health guru and motivational expert – Sam Redwood.

"Thank you so much, Sam, you've changed our lives forever." Sam heard this every day.

The elderly couple were quivering slightly as they looked at him, damp eyed as the diminutive wife described how her frail looking, quiet husband had suffered colon cancer and recovered from a terminal diagnosis thanks to Sam's work. Sam nodded and smiled and noted the thirty five year old blonde behind them.

"I'm so happy to hear that. It's so nice to meet you both. I'm so glad I helped." The usual response whilst he waited until today's prize reached the front of the queue waiting to shake his over-warm hand. He quickly reached for his cold glass of water before the slightly overweight, sweating blonde got to him, beaming and battering eyelashes with unfortunately clogged mascara.

"I'm such a huge fan of yours, Sam."

"Really? That's good to hear! Are you rushing off anywhere, or do you have time to wait while I pack up?"

Sam liked girls. Sam liked lots of girls. Girls in every town he spoke in welcomed Sam on the same one night only basis every time he visited. Indeed, Sam would sometimes have to make excuses to avoid some of them, they were so keen. Never in his life previously had he dreamed that one day he would have the pick of quite so many women, and many of his former school mates looked on with envy at his legendary lifestyle and success with women. This one wasn't on his 'ten' list, but she was a little imperfect, which he liked, and extremely keen to get to know him, which he liked even more.

"Is that true, that you're the richest hippy in the world?"

"How about I tell you about it over some food?" Sam donned his particularly foxy mirrored sunglasses.

Another meal. Poor Sam worried a little, but if he was going to get today's prize, a meal was necessary to provide the time necessary to close the deal. This one hadn't been taking his advice for very long – she still had the skin of a conventional eater. A little encouragement, he thought, and soon she would have the glowing skin and bright eyes of the raw vegan.

Two hours later and Sam was dressing after a lengthy shower during which the offending mascara had mercifully been removed.

"Well, thank you, maam." He smiled at her. She, not believing her luck, smiled back. What a story for her hard drinking 'normal' friends when she saw them later for a not-at-all-raw beer and Corn chips. Sam Redwood, who would believe it!

"When will you finish?" Una looked at the heap of bedclothes concealing her daughter, who was trying to hide under her handstitched patchwork quilt in an effort not to be seen slacking.

"I don't know, mum. Please just go to bed. It will be done in the morning."

Kira had been painting the narrow tall bathroom for five hours, fifteen minutes at a time, and was having another lie down to regain the strength to continue. A combination of liver disease, exhaustion and grief was making a normally simple job very, very hard.

"I tried to put the ladder up in the bath to get to the corner, but I thought the bath would probably crack under my weight."

Kira was four hundred pounds. She hadn't always been this weight, it had gone up and down constantly for fifteen years, between cancer, attempts to give up smoking and continuous bereavement, she had 'given up, giving up' and was hoping for a swift death. Painting the bathroom was essential however. Kira was not a girl for giving up on work, even if she had given up on her misbehaving body.

The doorbell rang and Una went to answer it, shaking her head slightly. She knew Kira would finish the job, but the tiredness was worrying. She wasn't going to let Kira know that, however. It was not the Scottish Presbyterian way to show compassion on a day-to-day basis. Compassion was for very special occasions.

It was ex number four.

"Kira?" The tall aging punk smiled apologetically.

"She won't see you if you've been drinking, you know that."

"OK" Harry turned to go. He had never grown out of his fear of Una in the twenty five years since he had started seeing Kira. He knew he was one of a crowd of men who had never got over her, but he still felt the need to try and get her back after a few beers for courage. Kira was special, it didn't matter what size she was she was still special to him. So special, in fact that took some personal pride in the fact he had bonked one hundred and twenty pounds off her weight a few years before.

Unfortunately, he was well aware that four other exs felt exactly the same way.....

Kira heard the front door close two floors below and sighed. 'At least I can get the bathroom finished,' she thought. 'I promised dad to get the house done, and I'll be damned if I won't before I die.'

Kira, a notoriously foul-tempered Scottish academic, had had a hard five years. Losing two relatives and a couple of friends one after another had left her feeling miserable enough, but the lack of work after graduating from two degrees and corruption in the temporary jobs she was able to secure had left her with no confidence in any of the beliefs she had held so dearly before studying. Hard work did not have a reward, and you cannot trust people you stupidly trusted at sixteen when pushing forty. There are no prizes for holding off on having a family or waiting for the right person, and family are not necessarily on your side. Kira's faith in everything had gone, apart from finishing the house life seemed entirely devoid of a happy horizon.

Over the years, Kira had learned to use art to delay bouts of despair, and two pieces of work were waiting to be finished even after the house had been repaired. The endless stream of exs requiring her attention had long ceased to be a solace and become a major pain, although it was gratifying to still pull at four hundred pounds. How many women would have multiple boyfriends at this size? She allowed herself a portly smirk in the mirror at the folly of her exs. They were all still liars, and all she really wanted was someone honest. The relationship with Harry had failed when he still couldn't tell her the truth when she asked him to try seeing other people in order to tell her honestly about it. She had thought this would either provide the reassurance to make it work, or break them, and break them it certainly did. Apparently men prefer to lie and pretend monogamy even when totally incapable of it.

Kira struggled to her feet and shuffled back to the bathroom to tape a paintbrush to a broom handle. At least she could avoid breaking the bath.

"So what was this one like, Sam?" Don, Sam's best friend was on the phone for a chick update. Sam was standing in yet another horrible hotel room with a bottle of water in his other hand.

"Oh ya know, blonde, nice tits – not so hot in the sack, better in the shower, but it wasn't a busy day."

Don laughed. Sam's path to the stars was paved with women just like this. Sam's life was a lengthy porn movie, punctuated by financial ups and downs and the occasional collapse from tiredness. Sam never seemed to stop – Don admired the energy but was glad he had decided to settle down. He looked at the unsuspecting bison, grazing half a mile away from the ranch house, and thought about his delightfully cuddly and happy girlfriend, asleep in his bed. He could chop some wood and think about dinner later.

"Gotta go, Don, meeting with the new execs."

"Haha, enjoy that, Sam."

Sam was off to meet the new investors in his baby, Ragha Health Foods.

Dr Malcolm Swartz shook his head.

"I just don't understand how they can take it all away?"

Malcolm had just been struck off for over-prescribing medication. All the years he had been an MD, all the lunches, all the holidays, all the meetings. He had always thought giving people what they wanted was all he had to do. What people wanted, sick patients and pharmaceutical salesmen alike, appeared to be as many medications as possible.

"What am I going to do, Celia?"

"Before or after the divorce?" Celia, a well-groomed, well-kept, bejewelled goddess, was not the most sympathetic of women at the best of times. Now she was furious to discover that instead of the spoilt Jewish wife of a major earner, she was the wife of a disgraced MD and would not be attending any more country club lunches. "I'm not kidding, Malcolm." She dropped her tone to indicate seriousness.

Malcolm briefly visualised his own suicide before retreating to the white yoga room overlooking the ocean. He would have to sell his beloved condo, he knew that. It would all have to go, pretty quickly too. Life based on credit was considered good citizenship in Malibu, he had never been a saver.

Celia had big expectations. How could you just lose everything in one day? He adopted the crocodile pose and as he stretched towards the ceiling, calculated he could possibly hide a few hundred grand. Enough to scratch a living without working, he supposed, but he would have to find another way to really live. As for losing her, she was a good hostess and had been a good mother, but good company she was not. The money was more of a concern, and sleeping in the overwarm minimalist white guestroom in his own house wasn't Malcolm's idea of fun at all.

He had always liked out west, property was cheaper there. He could sit and think for a while, plan his next move. For years, contemplating a bleak future with Celia, he had been concealing small works of Art from promising artists in his fishing lodge. He also had a rather extensive bonsai collection he could dispose of – she would probably sneer at that too. Celia wouldn't be seen dead in a fishing lodge, and so at least that was safe. Yes, he figured, she could take her (several) million dollarsworth of flesh and leave him with enough to start over. It wouldn't be a rich living, but he was sure something would come up. He concentrated on his breathing as he stretched his spine towards the heavens.

Joseph was hungover. He had been out partying all night with his friends from his college football team, and had just cancelled his usual Saturday workout with the guys. He put his stinking football gear into the washing machine and sprayed the bag with some horrible smelling fabric freshener before opening his narrow apartment window and sticking it as close to the draught as possible.

He wasn't sure what was making him feel quite so bad, but whatever it was he thought he had better stay exactly where he was until work started on Monday. Large shrieking women in an enclosed space doing dull, dull office work. He groaned at the mere thought. His mother may be very proud but city living since college didn't suit Joseph at all, and he was tired of pretending he was something he wasn't. He flicked on the computer on the small desk. There must be something else he could do. He randomly searched, eyes still hurting from the smoke and flashing lights from the night before. Might as well get wasted, he thought, and rolled a small fat joint.

By evening, Joseph, by now rather unkempt and smelly, was lying on the floor staring at the ceiling. He had found the answer, not only to his hangover, but to his feelings of impending doom in regard to post-college city life. Tomorrow he would empty the cupboards into the garbage and start his new life. His mother wouldn't be happy, he knew that, but in a few months he would be his own boss!

He got up, ran a bath and deftly rolled another fat one.

Peter the fruitarian got off his bike with some relief.

"Fuck that, for a game of soldiers." Lovely, his ravishing but noticeably thin girlfriend, took the bike from him and handed him a towel. She sat down and watched him rub the mud and sweat from his legs.

"No money though, what are we going to do?"

"It's Ok, we can sleep at Toni's and I'm sure she'll have a few bananas in, eh? We can use some of the youtube money until next month. The website is paying for itself now."

Peter had just quit the race before the end. Lovely knew that this was a considerably better option for his temper than losing, but sponsorship wasn't going to appear at this rate and they had nowhere to live. Not that this was too serious in Western Australia, there seemed to be an endless procession of friends with fruit and beds to stay with, but something had to change. Lovely was well used to uncertainty, but sometimes it would be nice if he would just finish a race so they could have some sort of actual living.

"I feel like making a video, what do you reckon?" Peter grinned at Lovely. "A real nice one, too. Got your bikini, love? We can take down Sam Redwood again, that's always fun."

"Redwood will do as he's told, you can see that just by looking at him." Richard White, a tall distinguished east coaster, cast a gimlet eye across the breakfast table at his errant nephew. A younger member of the most evil family business in North America, he had just invested heavily in health food in the form of buying most of Ragha Health. He still needed guidance in the family ways, nevertheless.

"I wouldn't count on it, he's a stupid hippy. Stupid hippies have principles." His neatly attired nephew pursed his lips.

"Haven't you seen his background? He's a very rich stupid hippy, and you don't become a very rich stupid hippy without being corruptible. Go ahead with Ragha, and make sure he knows exactly what he has to do or get rid of him."

"OK, Uncle Richard, but I'm pretty sure we're gonna have to lose him. We can't risk it."

"Don't worry about it, as long as his face is on the labels he can't do or say much about it."

Kira looked at the consultant in some disbelief.

"Sorry?"

"You're deaf because you're fat. I'm very surprised at your blood pressure, you obviously weren't always so fat."

"What exactly is the connection between being fat and going deaf? And I may well be fat, but I'm not stationary you know. I've been renovating a house for the last two years, and looking after 4 elderly people."

"I'm advising antacids for indigestion. I think there must be fluid build-up behind your ears, you certainly aren't conventionally deaf. But you are very fat."

How very observant. Kira realised there was no point whatsoever in talking to this person. Kira was now gaining weight on orange juice and rice cakes, and could see no real reason for a 7lb gain per week, never mind the increasing skin problems or deafness. Her doctor had simply said "Stop eating." As this evidently meant completely, Kira could see no way of avoiding eating herself to death.

Back at the GP, still shuffling in her late father's slippers, Kira finally got an appointment for the new Obesity Specialist centre. She couldn't quite understand the logic of her doctor, she had lost a hundred and twenty pounds in the previous few years low carbing at his suggestion, so her doctor evidently knew she had some degree of willpower, but she assumed that it was because of her desperate request for surgery and this was some new procedure of the NHS. He appeared to think her tiredness was simply grief and she would require some sort of support system to lose it all again. Kira had once been a hundred and forty pounds, and now she was four hundred. It didn't actually change her life at all, same faces, same demands, a few more inadequate suitors actually when she was big. The only difference was that now her hair was falling out, she was conscious of the dying process. All she had to do was outlive her mother, that was all that was required and then nothing would matter anymore. The prospect of dying wasn't nearly as worrying as the mystery illness that was getting worse every day. She worried about not outliving her mother, and about not fulfilling her promise to her late father of making sure everything was OK with the house. The dying bit, however, was not much of a concern. Kira had had enough.

Hilary measured her waist again.

"I'm tiny!"

"Yep, I told you. Just keep doing it and you will stay that way too." Nina smiled as she swiped the apple out of her son's hand. "Apples are for Saturdays, Colin. It isn't Saturday. What else would you like to eat?"

Colin, a small blonde boy, decided to try the salt option instead. "Liquid aminos and lamb's lettuce?" He hoped that this would be the correct answer. He knew from experience that this varied.

"Better, yes you can have that." Nina reached for the bottle and handed it to Colin. "How is the book going?"

"Nearly done and the TV company said next week for filming." Hilary leaned against the cluttered kitchen counter.

"Good, you'll be a great asset. You look even more sensible with those glasses, wear them. And make sure you have that really huge picture of you handy." She picked up some shallots. "No, you can't have Liquid Aminos and Celtic Salt together, Colin, pick one."

Johan plunged the nettles into the cold stream and shook them. If anything had been on them, it had no chance in the fast moving stream water. His elderly father shook his head. A small, thick set man in his late 70s, he was at a loss to understand the cycle of knowledge that had led his family to stake a claim on the land and conquer it only to have this son of his fall head over heels with the weeds they had tried so hard to eradicate.

"We grow all this great stuff, and you won't touch any of it, and you don't want to be a farmer. What's going to happen to the land?" His father looked at him witheringly.

"I've told you dad, this is the real food. Look how well I am now." Johan had been a skinny and frequently ill child, teenager and then young man before taking up a 'clean' natural diet in his late twenties.

"That stupid film on the roller skates just makes you look like an overgrown teenager. Why don't you see the light, son and earn a real living with me?"

"I am earning a real living, and it helps people, dad."

"I don't know who you think you're helping telling them to eat weeds. This is the stuff your grandmother was trying to get away from. This great country, all these doctors and all that training and you want to eat weeds we tried to forget about." Johan's father shook his head again. "I'm always proud of you son, you know that, but all that money we spent on your filmmaking training and you keep making films about weeds." Life had been hard on the small ranch for decades. They were now supposed to be reaping the rewards, but life had apparently come full circle.

Anastasia woke up and scowled at herself in the mirror. She looked perfect, as always, but the thought of another day at the gym, fanning her face to protect her botox, followed by experimentation with makeup rather than dinner, did not please her today. What she needed was a day off from being the most famous human doll in the world. Choosing to make your living by achieving impossible perfection had not been an easy choice.

"What you need is a proper job." Her mother worried.

"There are no proper jobs, and besides, I am creative, I cannot live like that. I'm doing fine."

The reality was that Anastasia's lengthy classes in mysticism, held in the local school, would take up most of the week's evenings. People were starting to pay to listen to her classes in out of body travelling and meditation, and Anastasia knew that the more famous she got, the more money she would be able to attract, eventually paying her far more than she could ever have hoped to earn as a town planner. The ultimate aim had to be her own cult following, and this, whilst slow largely due to her gender, was not impossible in the Ukraine.

She used her mobile phone to take another couple of pictures of her impossibly slender waist and uploaded them to her youtube account before turning towards the blender to make her food for the day. Brocolli and avocado today, for her skin. She knew her career as a human doll could not continue too far past her 30th birthday, which loomed surprisingly soon, and lying about her age wasn't really a long term option when so much of her life was online already. Anastasia, a formerly hard drinking, hardworking and hard living Ukrainian, determined to use her work ethic to amass as many followers as possible before gravity would take its inevitable effect. She would know when the time was right for her move to America, where she could make far more money than she was bringing in here. The videos were bringing in a trickle, the classes a little more, but by far the most lucrative angle she could see was an American cult. California was full of people prepared to pay big money for her enlightenment, she thought. It was just a matter of picking the right time.

The skinny redhead was slowly drawing her tongue up his inner thigh whilst the sagging brunette was, as instructed, dragging her rather inadequate breasts slowly across Sam Redwood's chest. He had had a rotten day. The hotel room was pretty lame too, but at least he had company.

"That's really amazing, Carrie, carry on as long as you want. Hey Honey, you're so sweet." They all smiled vacantly at Sam's little joke. Sam's mind started to drift towards the pruning in his Hawaiian garden. His mobile rang. Carrie and Honey snuggled alongside Sam whilst he took the call:

"Hi, Don, they took the whole goddamn company." Even the four hands and two pairs of lips on his thighs and stomach weren't a sufficient distraction to prevent the loss of Sam's wood.

"You're shitting me."

"No, they want me off the board, they've taken the whole lot. I don't know what I'm gonna do."

"How did they manage that?"

"Aw I dunno, I'll have to talk to you later." Sam's disappointment was starting to make the girls show more interest in each other than him, which didn't suit him at all.

"Yeah sure, I guess I'll talk to ya later."

"I guess."

Sam returned to his comforting angels, whilst Don looked at his girlfriend, confused. "He's been kicked out of Ragha Foods?"

Lucy's eyebrows shot up. "How do they think they will keep the profile without him?" She heated her hands behind her as she stood in front of the fireplace, logs crackling comfortingly.

"The books are already written – He would have to recall them all. He's stuck with permanently advertising them. That's a real shitty thing to do."

"Well, Sam's no angel, how come he couldn't have wriggled out of that one?"

"Yeah well, Sam's naughty but he isn't evil enough to keep up I guess, who knows? If he isn't winning, he won't tell me, that's for sure."

Malcolm sat in his favourite old chair at the varnish deprived, ramshackle fishing lodge. The trees dripped on the roof, and he enjoyed the sound as he sat contemplating his future. Celia had been as good as her word. He was a free man. Free to do whatever he wanted, but what did he want? Right now he wanted only to talk to someone, anyone, and at the lodge he was as far away from anyone as he could get. He sought solace in his yoga books and leafed through some of the old hippy stuff from his college days. Some of those guys made a living from talking about spirituality, but where was God when they struck him off?

He looked at the pictures of smiling crowds of well-dressed American hippies enjoying mutual assurance of worthiness and smiled to himself. Idealism lends itself to a peculiar form of group contentment, even if the cause is futile and out-of-step with cold, hard reality, a reason for belonging. Malcolm reflected that he had never felt fully part of the medical fraternity and had just spent decades doing what he was told. Life in the strict hierarchy was not fun. He didn't have to do that anymore, at least that was some cause for celebration.

Several very dark weeks and much meditation later, Malcolm started seeing spirituality in the water, the trees and the dead fish he was still eating and realised how he was to make his living now that he was a disgraced MD. As an alternative health practitioner he could not only help the sick, but wreak revenge on the system that had lost him his wealth and social position. Also his wife, but he wasn't so bothered about that. He packed up the artworks, the yoga books, and what was left of his belongings and headed out in his old campervan to find his new home. A compound in the desert, he thought, where he could set up some sort of communal arrangement and live the life he had dreamed of in college. First, he thought, he would head to the world famous Stoic Health Centre, offer his services and see if he couldn't pick up some tips.

Joseph hurled the last plastic bag filled with convenience foods into the graffiti covered trashcan before sauntering down the street to pick up some more liquorice papers. He was already a little pale but he felt he was free of his mother's cooking and that felt good already. Not that he disliked her at all, quite the reverse, he loved being smothered, but he had a strong feeling that growing up meant growing out of anything she had predetermined as suitable for him.

It was cold in NYC that day, and he huddled inside his sheepskin as he went down the street to source some fresh food and the papers to get him wasted once again. A cute little hippy chick passed him, her hair flicking him in the stiff breeze. He took this as a good omen and resolved to investigate the local health food store on his way back.

Hilary was slightly appalled when she saw the London news. "Nutty diet? I feel a bit misrepresented." She twitched at her embroidered cardigan and screwed up her nose.

"Don't worry about it, you should have seen what they did to me, it still brings you more attention, and you can use the footage to imply fame when you hit the US market. Is that ebook ready yet? Have you set up some subscription options on your website?" Nina barely looked at her as she chopped the tomatoes for the raw kelp noodles.

"Yes, but I'm not sure who is going to pay me to look at a website."

"Don't worry, you'll be surprised. You need to start looking around to see who you can network with."

"I don't care what your precious Dr Degnan says, I don't want to go cycling today, that's all." Lovely was not enjoying the prospect of another hundred kilometres, even if Peter was.

"Fine, fine just stay in and have a few clicks on the vids then." Peter wasn't used to insurrection from Lovely, but If she felt that strongly about it – strewth!

After Peter left, Lovely took another look at the video of her wriggling provocatively in her bikini for the delighted fans whilst reminding them of their duty to their animal friends. She looked fat, fat, fat. Cycling was all very well, but if it meant fatter thighs she was staying in and staying off the bananas today. An old hand at vomiting, she locked the door of the bathroom in relief. A full morning on her own, away from the kind, attentive and hyperactive Peter. A full morning to indulge her secret passion. To hell with her teeth and throat, she wasn't going to have big thighs.

Kira had told the improbably young adviser at the weight loss centre to get knotted. Having two sisters, she was well used to people who know nothing about weight problems attempting to give advice. The assumption was always that your day revolved around food, and never positive. It is amazing when people who have a weight problem are so often dumped with responsibilities that their 'healthy' associates simply refuse to take on, that the assumption is that they are the lazy ones. Kira idly wondered if this particular idiot had ever worked a nineteen hour day in order to return home and lift someone that didn't particularly want to be lifted.

The crunch had come after being led to a special 'fat' chair. This chair, built for someone of 600lb or more, dwarfed her. She was then told of all the people the twenty something year old had helped, including someone in their sixties who had apparently never known how to eat.

"I'm an ex chef and can you tell me how often you have dealt with a weight problem of your own, please?"

"Um, never."

"I've lost your entire bodyweight 3 or 4 times. Do you really think you have any advice to offer me?"

"Um, I don't think you're suitable for our programme."

"I agree."

This led to Kira turning to her late father for advice. Kira's father, an artist, had spent a small fortune on his health, massive toolboxes of pills were produced at every meal. Kira resolved to keep looking at alternatives until she found a permanent solution.

Thus the first book was started. Kira figured she might as well database the lot.

Anastasia delicately stepped off the plane in Tokyo to be greeted by a small group of smiling Japanese people with cameras and a sign with her name on it. The appearance was alongside a famous Japanese anime doll today. It was by no means a huge fee, but the free trip was nice. Anastasia, resolved that all appearances were worthwhile, enjoyed the attention if nothing else.

A few shots were taken of her with the other doll, then she was offered sushi, which she could not eat, then, after a rather uncomfortable night in a very small hotel room, she was put back on a plane to the Ukraine. Glamour is so often not very glamorous, but at least it would raise her profile in Japan.

Anastasia was very hungry when she got back. 72 hours without food or water was good, she supposed, and well in keeping with the Eastern European tradition of dry fasting, but getting too hungry when you are restricted to vegetables and water is never a good idea. She 'binged' on half a carrot whilst blending her spinach, fennel and raspberry smoothie and felt quite sick after it.

"You've put me in a tent? At a festival? What the hell?" Sam Redwood was not a happy man. His agent hadn't thought about Sam getting his female 'rewards' at the Goddess festival. He was forced to content himself with a public footrub of a free sample of magnesium oxide from a fan. His performance had been exemplary, even by his own standards. Smooth and as usual treading the fine line that comes just before smarmy, he had delighted a young and overexcited crowd with vague references to the 'mother' and had sold a few thousands worth of goods in addition to his usual hefty fee, but what use was money without the pussy?

Sam's agent was stifling tears after the exchange on the phone. Years of doing what she was told and one mistake had led to thirty minutes of punishment by telephone. The little boy with the curl on his forehead, she thought, when he was good, he was very, very good, etc. He would still expect to play with her next time he was in town, of that you could be sure.

"But how much money did you make, Sam?" Don was used to bringing Sam down from his tantrums. He had made a good bit of money himself at the event.

"Only about twenty G turnover, not a good result for three days really, and those bastards at Ragha are still selling shit with my face all over it." Sam was petulant but at least calmer.

"Well you can't withdraw the books either – you'll just have to wait until the print run dries up."

"No shit, Sherlock. Look at that Don, even the old bald guys are getting laid and I'm stuck in a tent." Don was relieved to see Sam was starting to laugh. Traditionally the 'old bald guys' would turn up to soak up Sam's leavings, amusing him greatly. Such is the life of an American speaker, attract the chicks and the dudes will follow to pick up the sad ones at the back.

"He's filming the weeds again."

"Just let him do it, he's happy."

"What's to happen to the farm?"

"Maybe he will create a market for organic weeds or something, either way – he's well, he's happy and he does seem to be making some sort of living. Stop worrying."

"I can't. Three generations worked to make this place, and look at him."

"He believes in what he's doing. Something will work out." Johan's mother wasn't sure exactly what would work out, but her beloved son sure did look happy. He had been such a sickly young man, and now here he was, strong, healthy and apparently very young at fifty. "Maybe he's right and we're wrong?" The small seventy –something white-haired fireball of a woman gave her husband a stern look.

"I sure hope so for the sake of the farm." Johan's father shook his head. "Otherwise you'd better start eating some of these magic weeds and have a miracle baby." They smiled at one another naughtily and carried on eating their chicken.

Joseph had thrown out his football gear, grown his hair, set up his shop online, written his first ebook and was marketing via the sparse network of contacts in the world of alternative nutrition. He was fairly confident by now that he could give up the day job and make his way in the world without any further support. His speaking engagements were picking up, and making his daily videos wasn't a huge chore for the response rate of people seeking solutions and remedies from his store. Plenty of people seemed to want to go to a new vendor, and he found his colleagues in this small industry very helpful. Indeed, Sam Redwood himself had become a good, if not close friend, and had invited him along as a speaker to several minor events. All in all, his future did look pretty bright, and Joseph was reasonably content apart from the seemingly endless emails from people asking everything from when to eat fruit, to how to cure cancer. Soon, he reckoned, he could afford someone to take care of all that. In the meantime, he opened an email from one Hilary Yardley.

Dear Mr Moth,

I have written an ebook on my journey with health food, and wonder if you might stock it in your shop? I have enclosed some pictures.

Hilary Yardley

His eyes widened when he saw the pictures.

Kira was still up. It was 5am but she was dealing with her staff member in Russia, who seemed to keep extremely odd hours for a Russian. Running a twenty four hour business, even for fun, is not easy. She laughed as she passed the youtube video on to her friend, Ghost.

"Get a load of this guy, he is so full of shit."

Sam Redwood, full throttle. This went on for some months. Kira wasn't even sure why she was still listening to him. Her passing interest in rhetoric and linguistics told her he was a remarkable speaker despite almost constant 'winging it,' and she did quite like the positive reinforcement angle he favoured, a result, she later learned, of the use of NLP, but she was only half hearing anything he said whilst working on her virtual business. He spoke about a lot of stuff she was quite familiar with from her father, whom she missed, but why she would choose to listen to this guy when a lot of what he said was laughably corny was a mystery even to her. One of her parent's favourite jokes was to advise reading Dale Carnegie in response to any problem, she supposed that had something to do with it. In any case, she found it entertaining to let him ramble on as she worked, and frequently passed the funnier ones on to Ghost, who laughed at a lot of the same things she did.

"Am I just watching him because he's cute?"

"Is he cute?"

"Well not really, to be honest he looks a little bit like me, and I actually don't look at him that often either. You can see the little cogs turning. Why am I still listening to him?"

Kira eventually took to shouting at the computer in the studio while she worked "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M WAITING FOR YOU TO SAY BUT HURRY UP AND SAY IT!"

It wasn't until one unusually vicious video, taken by someone who had long since gone off Sam, in which he made an error and allowed his smile to drop, that Kira finally relented. He was a real person. A gloriously imperfect, real person. It might be worth surviving after all. Maybe there was a point. She climbed the ladder leading from the studio and proceeded to the kitchen to make a salad, the first of the rest of her life.

Dr Swartz, who, freed from his formerly respectable life as a Malibu MD, had taken to wearing amusing hats and a monocle, was listening at the door as Barry Crispin fired Robin Swayze. He didn't like the sound of it at all.

"We just can't have you making religious statements at work, especially not about homosexuality. I'm sorry."

Robin ranted for a while, about religious freedom and his principles, then Malcolm heard him get up to leave. He quickly dived down the corridor before he heard the door of Crispin's office open and close. He guessed he wouldn't be seeing Robin again then.

Crispin was a dour man, rarely took his own health advice and appeared to concentrate on his alarmingly tall coiffure and neatly trimmed moustache rather than his business, on a day to day basis at any rate. Rumour had it that some skulduggery had been involved in his takeover at Stoic, but no one seemed to know if it was true. Malcolm didn't like him all that much, but he was here for information on the business so he was prepared to tolerate him for a year or so whilst he located his future home. In the meantime, several kind baby boomer ladies had taken pity on him. All in all things were looking up for Malcolm since Celia's departure.

Kira liked to shock Aldous.

"I'm thinking of getting married, Aldous." They had just been shooting. Kira had decided, to balance her raw non-meat diet, she would take up clay pigeon shooting. She had lost a hundred and twenty pounds by this time, and was feeling a little better.

"Oh?" Aldous knew from the tone that Kira was about to say something utterly ridiculous. He had known her a long time. He never quite knew how seriously to take her, but he knew the 'incoming ridiculous statement' tone when he heard it.

"Yes, I think I'll marry Sam Redwood." She stroked the dusty dashboard of the now filthy blue Subaru.

"Who is he?"

"Oh just some Yank author, looks a bit like me, vain, bit of a slapper." Kira was on a roll now but tried to keep a straight face.

"Why would he want to marry you? He's famous for something?"

"You don't get it, do you Aldous." Kira was always astonished at the lack of confidence in her friends. It never occurred to her that there was any division between her and anyone. "Famous people are just normal people minus the sense of shame." Kira wasn't quite this staggeringly self-confident, but she loved making Aldous think. "Why do you think famous people are automatically different?"

"Well, I quite fancy Elizabeth Hurley, but I don't think shed want to date me any more than she would date a gas fitter from Burnley."

"I don't particularly fancy him, apart from obviously I'm delighted that other people do and he happens to look a bit like me. I don't even imagine I would spend any time with him. I could just see it working out. He probably isn't even a very nice person. I just think I would suit him." Kira remained nonchalant and absurdly upbeat.

"Why would you want to marry him then?" Evidently Aldous believed in love. Not that depressed then, Kira noted. She had been yanking Aldous' elusive cheerful chain for years, with varying degrees of success.

"It's a bit strange, it just kind of feels right. I can see exactly how it could work, and I can see where I fit in. I'm writing the book for him now. Besides which Aldous, you don't get it at all. It isn't about who you are, it's about your level of cheek. That's why celebrities are celebrities, because they understood that in the first place." She maintained her cheeky spoilt brat tone.

"I never thought about it like that."

"You never do."

Later that afternoon, Aldous read over Kira's initial notes for the book. "Is he likely to understand this?"

"According to his qualifications, he is actually very clever, although he appears to think cleverness is unpopular. You know what Yanks are like, he probably thinks he would be considered a 'dweeb' or a 'dork' or some such if anyone thought he actually had a brain. I calculate that this should springboard him way beyond anything he has time to do with his workload. Should take me seven years or so and then that rather ramshackle, seat-of-the-pants empire he is building could look rather beautiful."

"You're really serious about this? How old is he?"

"A few days older than me. Not about the marrying bit, Aldous, I'm not that crazy. Love isn't about possession; it's about achieving great things. I wouldn't want to cramp his style. Like I said, my twin is a bit of a slapper, and he's made far too many mistakes to pull off anything like this by himself. I'm not sure I even want to meet him, to be honest. He would have to want to meet me."

They watched one of Sam's videos.

"You see what I mean now? How long do you think that would last with me?"

"About twenty seconds." Aldous was still confused. This guy was a plonker. Not only that, he was a vegan. Kira didn't like vegans. She liked the countryside. She liked lichen, moss and insects, wool and the wild lands of her not-suitable-for-crops homeland.

"Exactly, but in my hands..."

"A lethal weapon for mass-cultural change." Aldous saw the light at last and pumped a fist in front of him, trying to look Stalinesque and triumphant, whilst trying to imagine the tall blonde playboy party animal rejecting a bunch of bikini wearing airheads and being cheerily henpecked by a short fat Scottish woman who liked economics and embroidery and rarely left the house. She was right though, Sam Redwood did look horrifyingly like her. Same eyes, same hair, same irritating, self-satisfied smile even. Oh god, not two of them. Like the drama masks in theatres, one happy, one sad. Carrot and Stick. What hope for mass consumer capitalism and thoughtless consumption? He pushed back his glasses.

"You're catching on, Aldous. And as long as we keep him in girls, all I have to do is sit at home and pat the fluffy white cat. Or the leopard, or the ginger. As I've said, love isn't all about kisses and flowers. Sometimes it's a bit more important, not just for you but everyone else. He's only really interested in work and girls anyway. I can see Redwood's dream quite clearly, and it's entirely compatible with mine, which is all that really matters. With that gob, I can take over the world!" Aldous and Kira chuckled at this surreal but hugely amusing vision. Kira dropped her tone back to sanity. "And even if I can't, at least I will have written this. Who cares why, as long as I get it done. You have to use what's in front of you."

"I hesitate to point this out Kira, but he's a vegan."

"Oh, no, he's a raw vegan. I'm one too, most of the time, it's slightly different. He wears wool, for example, and probably likes native African drums. Vegan on health grounds, rather than boring the pants off everyone at dinner about their dreadfully inferior morals. Raw vegans bore on about herbal supplements, organics and how marvellous they look and feel instead."

"I hate that bastard, that's why." Peter beamed. He had just put the finishing touches on a cartoon of Sam Redwood for his youtube channel. It was particularly tasteless, even by Peter's usual standards. "And anything with his name on it gets more hits. Points make prizes, Lovely. Plenty of people hate Redwood once they get to know him. Even Mrs Redwood there will, sooner or later." Peter had spotted Kira in one of her youtube videos and had laughed at the odd resemblance.

"Hey great. Serves him right for ripping off all those noobs." Lovely's thighs weren't fat today. She was happy. She took a long drink of water and pressed on the boil on the back of Peter's neck. "Do you think we should do something about that? It looks kinda nasty?"

"No, just leave it until it gets big enough to video when you puncture it. We can get a few hundred dollars out of it. It's evidence of detox from fruit."

"When are you leaving to see Degnan?"

"He wants the video for next month, so it won't be long now. It'll just be a few days. I can see Ferdie and Tom the runner when I'm over. The usual, I just hang around the place for a bit, say it's world class, make sure he fills it for the summer, and away we go."

"That'll cost a bit, the flights?"

"We'll be 'right, love, don't worry."

This was the problem. Peter never worried. Lovely was wondering if he ever would worry. She wanted tits. Big tits. The irony of her obsession with her weight was that it did not appear to apply to her flat chest.

"Ferdie's just written that book about Redwood. We can get a great video out of interviewing him. Trip will pay for itself." Ferdie was a Canadian who had worked for Sam Redwood during his careless younger days. Flippant comments and careless management, coupled with a flagrant disregard for Ferdie personally, had filled Ferdie full of sufficient hatred for him to make his living by writing gossip books about his former employer. Peter generally enjoyed his company for around 15 minutes before the moaning would start. His visit would be short, just sufficient to get the video before inevitably Ferdie would start to complain about the amount Peter ate, the boring emphasis on cycling trips during his visit, and anything else he could think of. How Ferdie's wife could listen to that was beyond Peter, but hey who cared when he could probably get a thousand bucks or so from the hits on his video and advertising on the website. He could get sufficient mileage out of that to put something towards his beloved Lovely's nice new tits.

"You've been a great asset, Malcolm. Thank you for all your input." Barry Crispin couldn't hide his disappointment at Malcolm's departure from the Stoic Centre.

"It's been a tremendous pleasure." It hadn't, but this was how people seemed to conduct themselves here. Barry had been an unsmiling, ungrateful bastard, frankly, and Malcolm was delighted to be going. He looked around Barry's mustard yellow, lost in the 1960s office. Dull and airless, he thought, much like Barry himself. Malcolm had by now, written but was yet to publish, his first book, a spiritual insight into the moralistic divine joy of eating vegetables. Knowing as he did, that a variety of cults had used a similar low protein approach to its followers in the 1960s and 70s, he knew that the beautiful skin and low aggression approach to diet would ensure a loyal following in the years to come in addition to being genuinely healthy. He had made some great contacts, and gathered some useful intelligence about the market from his stay at Stoic. The right spread had, however, come up for sale, and Malcolm had determined to secure it.

After the ingratiating and somewhat gruelling goodbye, Malcolm picked up his bags and threw them into the back of his new partner's van. A pretty 50 something divorcee in a long red skirt trimmed with bells, she didn't smile terribly much, but had the figure of a girl thanks to her adherence to the Stoic principles of healthy living, and a great bank account thanks to the investment banker that had traded her in after her three children left home, routine for rich Americans. They were headed to a dustbowl out west, to a sprawling compound Malcolm had spotted. It had been on the market for so long that they were getting six months grace before the mortgage kicked in, and although Malcolm had made more than enough from his art collection to pay cash, he thought the offer worthwhile based upon his business projections.

It was a lengthy drive. Malcolm wondered how Celia was doing. He emailed her as they went through a township with wifi access. At the next pitstop of their five day journey, as they ate a disappointing and probably non-organic green salad, he got his reply.

"I'm marrying Herman Juskic, next month. I would ask how you are, Malcolm, but I don't care."

Herman Juskic was a bald, grossly overweight plastic surgeon with a reputation for a terrible temper. Malcolm smiled. 'The best wife money can buy.'

Aldous showed the video of Sam to his brother Harry, Kira's former boyfriend.

"Oh yeah, that's her gone all right." Harry looked disdainful and pulled on the razorblade on his necklace.

"Why though, he's a total twonk? Is it money?" Aldous didn't understand why his former drinking buddy would want to end up with what appeared to be a smarmy Californian asshole. He had seen Kira demolish grown men in political argument after fifteen pints of cider in the past, why would she choose to throw herself away on this cornball?

"Well, it's like this, you know Kira one way, and I know her the other. She doesn't waste any brains around me, that's for sure. He's Jewish, he has a work ethic, and the irritation probably makes her laugh. Kira has the luxury of not giving a shit about money, she won't care about that. Money is a bit like sport to her; she likes watching it but doesn't really understand the need to have some. She'd probably prefer it if he worked in the local chemist so that she could demand things on the high shelf and ask him for complicated stuff he didn't have so that she could look terribly disappointed."

"Kira has a thing for Jewish dudes?"

"Major thing for Jewish dudes."

"She never mentioned it? I don't think he's Jewish anymore?"

"That won't matter – it's the nose. She can't resist the nose. She likes to think she isn't superficial, but that nose – she won't see past that for years, if ever. He's a bit of a ladies man, is he?"

"How did you know?"

"Yeah, she loves slutty men too. That's Kira gone, yup, that's her dude. Slutty, Jewish, work ethic. She probably hasn't heard a word he's said, so she won't know how annoying he is. She explained it to me once, but I don't really remember what she said."

"Who knew?" Aldous shook his head.

"Ever tried passing a rabbi with Kira in the car? She's like a little puppy, nose pressed up against the glass. She probably hasn't even noticed that he's just an incredibly annoying hippy. Oh look she's got that jacket he's wearing too. Oh well, might as well find myself a crack whore." Harry shrugged and selected Call of Duty on the computer and shut the browser. "Look on the bright side, if they ever actually get together they will vanish for a couple of years before she tires him out and kills him. If the blisters don't get him the heart attack will. I hope he likes being humiliated; she likes to get you really angry before she bangs you senseless until you can't move. You have to be pretty healthy or she sends you back to the shop and asks for a replacement."

"That's the other weird thing, she says she wants to marry him but she doesn't want to meet him."

"That just means she really likes him. She'll get bored, she always does."

"Oh that's good." Aldous, feeling slightly better and certainly more enlightened, went to polish his shotgun. He had no idea his friend was so complicated. Or so randy, for that matter.

"Dmitri, I would like water only." Anastasia was watching a video of Fatima, the super-hot Iranian supermodel. Anastasia often wondered if she was, in fact, a lesbian. She thought of her obsession with beautiful women more as inspiration to keep her harsh regime intact, but as time went on, she found herself less and less interested in looking at men at all. They talked such rubbish on her website.

She and 'open husband' Dmitri were not at all rich, but they had enough not to worry about the day to day business of gym visits, food, makeup and she had another TV appearance coming up, this time on some cheap talk show hosted by a transvestite and a grinning ape of a presenter. She supposed this would be another attack on her 'mystic group,' fast being considered a potentially dangerous cult on tabloid Ukrainian TV. There was a limit on how much there was to say about her life, she found. It just wasn't that exciting, but still they would ask questions and questions and find something to object to.

She was hungry, but she had had her five hundred calories of vegetables for the day and wanted a smaller waist. She wanted to go to bed, but didn't want to make love and since Dmitri was bringing her the water, it meant he was in the mood.

"I like the grumpy ones, they want attention bad." Sam eyed the serious contender at the front of the open classroom on the beach. She had already complained about the size of the room she had paid four thousand bucks for and the lack of Wi-Fi.

"I'm not sure that's what she wants, Sam."

"Of course it is, that's what they all want." Sam delivered his motivational talk about feeding your spirit with super nutrition and allowed the audience to drift out of the room, watching his apparently attention seeking guest slowly prepare to go back to her hut.

She was putting her notebook into her bag. Bitterly thinking about the asshole that had just left her with the rent for their enormous brownstone apartment back home, she wondered how she was going to manage after having spent this now exorbitant amount on a stupid retreat. He wandered over and placed a hand on her ass, casually he thought, and smiled at her.

"I'm just going now." Horrified and wide-eyed, she was too shocked to do more than back off hastily. This retreat had been a big mistake. Huge. And now this creep was trying to feel her up. What the fuck? First James leaving her for her own sister, and now this?

"Ahm, I'm sorry, look I heard about the lack of Wi-Fi. Would you like to come up to the house tonight – you can get internet access there." Sam feigned genuine concern and played what he thought was his role to the hilt.

"Oh, right, thank you yes." Maybe he was a nice guy after all. She pushed her fringe from in front of her eyes.

She went out to the house that evening, a short walk from the hut she had been moved to since it had a couple of bars of internet access so that she could continue to berate her sister and ex-boyfriend whilst complaining to her mother of her misfortune.

Sam was posing in a sarong with a glass of some green liquid she could not identify as she approached. What a ridiculous man, she thought bitterly. She opened her laptop to proceed with her painful vendetta.

"You need to relax, would you like a massage. I'm famous for them, you know?" Sam twinkled helpfully.

"No, no that's fine thanks, I won't be long." She brushed a palm frond from her shoulder since she had squashed herself as far away as possible from Sam, who was spreading himself all over the brightly coloured cushions on the bamboo sofa. What crazy porno drug was this guy on? She quickly dashed off a few more lines of bile to her mother.

Half an hour later during her massage, she was about to turn over on the lounger when he uttered the immortal words.

"Can I see your boobs please?"

The result, instant nausea. She had no money left, her family were assholes, her ex-boyfriend was an asshole and now supposedly super well-balanced nice guy life guru Sam Redwood was an asshole.

"JUST BACK OFF, SLEAZEBAG." She didn't stop to do up her bikini, just pulled the t shirt over her trailing straps and grabbed the laptop as she ran out of the house.

Redwood was nonplussed. 'Can't win 'em all. Plenty more outside.' He gazed down at the beach below. Sure enough, several naked people of varying degrees of attractiveness were screaming and laughing as they ran around. Sam wasn't fussy. This was what they really came for, to dump their inhibitions and behave like wild children. Normally that was what they paid him for. 'Can't please everyone.'

He indulged himself with a spot of DIY lurve for the good of his lymph node drainage whilst looking, perversely, at pictures of Anastasia glowering coldly at the camera in full make up on his computer before retiring alone for a change, with a book.

"Eyegazing builds trust." Joe led Hilary to the rug by the fire. "You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life, sweetcheeks." His now long tangled hair shoved behind his ears, he gave her the best puppy dog eyes he could muster. He had found his queen.

"Ok" Fantastic, thought Hilary. Cute and randy. Ye olde eyegazing is getting a bit tired in terms of entertainment but looks like I'm in, lucky me!

Hilary, ever the genteel well-mannered English rose, tried to look fascinated for the next hour as she practised building trust with the only slightly irritating Joe. She spent the time calculating how many children and animals she could possibly fit into the next thirty to fifty years and counted her many blessings. She would miss England, she thought, but not that much, and the Americans seemed to like her degree of charming English understatement. Her first public appearances hadn't gone all that well, but Joe made it so easy it would not be long before they would be Alternative Health Royalty.

"It's like this rather charming cottage industry. Take a look at one of Johan's films. You could easily do that." Leo, a small, frantic man whose Ukrainian ancestry was becoming more obvious by the year fluttered at Kira in his usual bird-like way.

"I'm not sure you really understand how this works. Besides which, my book isn't about wild, raw, herbal, super or any other kinds of food, and I do not appear to be particularly thin or glamorous, nor is that my priority. Who's looking at a carer over forty?"

"We could be building a market for the book right now. I could design you a website."

"I think the general idea is to write the book first. I have to go write the book." Kira picked at a walnut Leo had thoughtfully provided in order to impale Kira to his sofa long enough to watch all his favourite films for the last decade.

"What is it about, then?"

"I'm not sure you would understand, but I am a bit pushed for time and no, thank you, I do not want to be filmed talking in a supermarket. I have to go look after my mother now." Kira got up and gratefully moved away from the devil walnuts.

"I think you're just a parrot." Leo was not looking forward to being alone, so he tried starting an argument.

"I think you have two degrees but have yet to see any classical academic work. Can you tell me when in the course of your psychology or media degrees you did any classical academic work?"

"OK." for once Leo looked chastened.

"You just have to accept some of us think on a slightly bigger scale, hence the actual work takes a bit longer. I know it's a bit hard for you to take in." Kira realised she had changed a lot since she had last seen Leo. Leo had stopped her hard-drinking ways ten years before, simply by not joining in. He was a tiny-in-stature, super polite, passive-aggressive Svengali film director, but she had not previously noticed the smallness of his outlook. Either this was new, or she was more confident than she used to be. "But if my legacy is going to consist of a book, it is going to be a world-altering and very serious book, judged by very serious people."

"We could open a chocolate shop?"

"No thank you."

Malcolm and Valerie had to sweep twenty thousand square feet of boards before the air was breathable. The main house at the compound had evidently not been in use for some time.

"I'm not sure we can grow much here."

"We can soon find out, it probably just needs an irrigation system. Even the Egyptians managed to have crops."

They created a one room living area to do them for the interim and Malcolm thought with joy about what he could do with the rest whilst Valerie wondered whether they were both crazy. It was thirty miles to the nearest small town, and there seemed to be nothing but dust between them and it. Acres and acres of dust, and no emergency source of water if the supply failed. Malcolm decided to take a very long drive around the land to see if a solution was apparent to this immediate problem, and took a tent and water carrier with him. Valerie took a small pot of dust and added water to it to see if it could grow anything on the window sill. She chose a tomato.

Peter had had enough of Ferdie after two days of listening to his whiny voice complaining of the heat in his current tropical location. Ferdie's new Tahitian wife seemed to have taken the role of translating his every thought, which compounded the long, long list of complaints. Privately, Peter could see how unfair it was that Ferdie had completely adopted Sam Redwood's business model whilst continuously dissing him, but he was damned if he was ever going to admit it. Sam Redwood was a real shit. A travelling snake-oil salesman with an attitude problem and he had far too much money. Peter had watched his flatmate die from anorexia trying to look good enough for Sam Redwood, and seen her become more and more miserable over months when he, as usual, rejected her after a lengthy exchange of extremely superficial conversations by email. Such is the nature of the hedonist. No point if it isn't in the next ten minutes.

He was now on the bus nearing the destination for Tom the runner's new place in the hills. Not a thrilling man to be around, but a solid and precise speaker who had given up his IT career at 39 and become a professional athlete. A remarkable story, and a remarkable person, and he agreed with Degnan's teachings about fruit, which was a bonus.

Degnan had been his usual grim self, shouting at some girl even in the course of making the promotional video about his 'world-class' retreats. Peter had spent the few days relaxing rather than joining in the multiple daily workout sessions with the wealthy parented young customers. At this point, he was longing to see Lovely. He hoped she would be longing to see him.

Sam was overjoyed when he got the email about his infomercial contract. "I'm gonna be on network TV!" The past months had been spent building up the new joint business venture with his friends Don and Michael. There were the usual misconceptions amongst the fans, particularly as neither Don, nor Michael, were vegan and a number of the products on Super Superfood Supermarket's inventory were, as such, quite the opposite, but Sam had never been a radical vegan anyway. Vegan on the grounds of health and enthusiasm for the work, and the women, rather than the browbeating and moral high ground.

Sam, unfortunately, was also more interested in socialising than reading when socialising was available, and so precious little additional research, far less thinking, got done in the presence of people. It stood him in good stead for making a little money, not so good for the quality of his written work. Even Hilary had displayed some suppressed dismay at his last book, which had consisted of a list of products rather than much actual content, and Hilary and Joe now had millions of good, green reasons coming in every year to like him. Slightly more than Sam, in fact, but that was another story.

Sam stretched out in the hottub and allowed his eyes to wander over the girl sitting 10 feet away at the other side. A young, shorthaired model this morning, clearly not with her mind on him at all. He would soon sort that out.

"What can I tell you, I'm unstoppable." He thought aloud, for the sake of making noise in her general direction.

"Sorry?" the girl looked up, slightly perturbed by the unexpected sound.

"I'm so sorry, I'm Sam Redwood. You were at the event last night?"

"No, I work here." She wasn't smiling. Sam already knew he was out of luck.

He tried conversation, but she was demure and disinterested. At length she mentioned her fiancé and she had obviously never heard of Sam in her short life. Sam was reminded of the dull ache of rejection, a low stomach pain he didn't experience very often these days. Never mind, he thought, the retreat is next week. Easy pickings.

He mentioned the young 'goddess' on his facebook page for his meagre fans later on that day.

"Pff that just means she said no." Kira, stuck on her book, looked at this with characteristic irritation. In the previous months whilst she lost the first two hundred pounds they had had some very odd interactions, including his throwing a tantrum over her comment that he 'resembled a rutting stag' beneath one of her own videos, which had left her very confused about whether to even bother trying to talk to this guy. On one had they thought the same way about lots of stuff and she had tracked his locations over 5 weeks watching the same video of hers every day, on the other he seemed to deliberately try in his updates to seem as vain and dumb as possible, to which she would invariably respond by being as grumpy and irritated as she felt. It always made her laugh to think about these interactions but which Sam was real, was he the empire-building, sex-obsessed eccentric of her dreams, or could he possibly just be a workaholic , narcissistic idiot savant of some kind? She kept her attempts at communication to once a fortnight or less, but despite thinking about potential arguments with him with some degree of pleasure, remained confused as to whether she was doing the right thing at all. By this time the book was entirely directed at boosting his career using Kira's developing cultural economic hypothesis. Kira found the idea of fame horrifying, and the coincidence of Redwood seemed to be the answer to many potential problems as well as providing some degree of motivation. Their similarity could be used to get her message across to the world without her being too publically involved, and she in turn could remove the stigma of Redwood's previous indiscretions, which were littered across the internet. A two tiered attack, on a two pronged problem and no messy relationship necessary. Fun maybe, but not necessary.

Sam was however, a slow payer with a terrible weakness for women apparently, amongst many other minor and seriously major sins. She wondered if she was doing the right thing. If this was her best hope, there didn't seem to be any, especially as his direct social skills appeared to be as limited as any other swinger she had ever attempted conversation with in the course of her quest for an honest slut. Given that she was aware that actually meeting him in person was a bad idea, this was not necessarily a deal breaker, not that there was a deal to break. His UK events tended to involve his ex, whom Kira had had a run-in with a couple of years previously. The ex probably didn't remember, but Kira did. That was insignificant in comparison with the pain Kira anticipated, of either finding him an empty vessel, or having to say goodbye to him at all if he wasn't.

She wondered if Peter Pipkin the cyclist was a better option, but whilst extremely honest and with, Kira perceived, potential for greatness, Peter had made too many enemies and seemed only to be interested in making more. Kira was stumped as to a solution. She really didn't fancy being famous when she didn't even particularly want to leave the house.

Sitting at yet another airport reviewing his own social network Sam Redwood wondered who on earth this cheeky woman was? She had seemed quite nice at first, then as the months wore on she had seemed to became more and more miserable. Sam could feel her pain, which wasn't normal for him, and he wasn't enjoying it. He preferred, quite rightly, to remain disassociated as a rule. She was also too smart to be a fan, so what did she want? It became obvious, the closer his visit to London came, that she would not be paying to come to see him with the rest of the fans. An enemy then! He blocked her from facebook after a romantic (she thought) reference to an error and facial slip that he immediately recognised. Bitch!

"She's just some crazy woman, I don't know. Hey, I should get used to having stalkers I'm gonna be on TV."

"She knows you." Don did not believe a word of it. Something he did not quite understand had happened, but not for the first time Sam was clamming up and there was no doubt that the 'crazy woman' was in emotional bits all over her tiny youtube channel. Don shrugged as he put the phone down. "Not the first, probably not the last."

A few days after the blocking, Kira discovered it and promptly released a feature length film pointing out the error of Peter and Sam's contentious ways and trying to reach a resolution by teasing them both, interspersed with some rather bizarre performance art in case they couldn't handle a full length lecture, a video she did not leave up for long but knew both of them had seen it.

She also launched a full scale attack of text based internet fury on Sam's approval only channel before the usual collapse in despair.

She was devastated. Kira was, after all, a rather lonely recluse. The book was put on hold. Kira simply couldn't face leaving the house, never mind the prospect of having to talk about the book to anyone. She ejected the remaining boyfriends and shut herself away to make art.

Johan took one look at the nettle and dandelion patch he normally raided on a daily basis and ran towards the low slung ranch house. It wasn't a particularly dry season. The patch was browning, however, and several of the 'weeds' had grown oddly, seemingly overnight. He ran his fingers through his lustrous russet curls.

"There's something wrong with the weeds, dad." Johan looked distraught. "Have you been spraying anything?" He wiped his hand on his jeans.

"No son, nothing unusual. We're organic. I can't spray anything unusual. Let's go and have a look." Johan's father reached into the kitchen drawer for the soil test kits before making his way outside to join his beloved crazy son.

Zeb Toledo laughed. Sam was always funny briefly, but a less emotionally healthy life advisor Zeb was yet to meet. "Yeah, just riddled with insecurities, ain't you?" he joked with Sam as Sam boasted of his so far very minor recovery from the disaster at Ragha. He was only half kidding. They had met as children, sent away to summer camp at a very expensive hothousing event by a couple of the more famous network marketing and public speaking gurus of the 1970s. They had assumed the same roles as their mentors. Toledo was the motivational expert and bigger earner, whilst Redwood had taken the health angle favoured by some lost in history millionaire-maker guru Toledo wasn't terribly interested in. Toledo looked on Redwood with some contempt when he looked at the balance sheet. Redwood was 'managing' on a measly ten million turnover and a few hundred thousand a year from his busy schedule of small speaking events, whilst Toledo was drawing nearly $100 million as a result of bigger locations, heavier investment in writers and a team of people who ensured that Toledo at least looked more successful on paper. Toledo knew Redwood would never match him. He was too obsessed with himself to ever catch up. Physician, heal thyself, he privately thought, but ever the professional, he often entertained himself by listening to Redwood's nonsense on the phone. Now Redwood was going into the thrilling world of network TV sales. Zeb suppressed a yawn. Would this guy ever stop yacking?

"Have you any idea how much these guys make? And the women..."

"Yeah right, good luck with that Sam, I gotta go, the writers are waiting. Always great to hear from ya. And have a good birthday."

"Birthday? It's not until August....."

"Get in touch when you aren't a miserable, conniving, little piece of shit that can't keep it in his pants or hang on to his business," Zeb muttered as he replaced the receiver. "Then you might make some real money and be able to afford some real writers." Zeb smiled distantly and kissed his beautiful brunette wife, who laughed at his Sam-weary expression, and rubbed his half shaved chin before yanking up the scruffy ill-fitting jeans favoured by modern motivators. He headed out to the helicopter waiting on his front lawn. Even the writers appreciated a good entrance.

Malcolm needed some help and some earth moving equipment, but he got both from a kindly neighbour. They redirected the river nearer the house, and soon the dust died down to the point that they were able to open a window or two during the summer months. The book had sold well, and his many fans in California were more than happy to make the long trip north to holiday in an alternative sunshine state.

Now that his immediate garden was green he rolled the old barrels out of the barn and filled them with the newly fertile earth to form an easy to keep, walk through garden. Valerie loved this. Even as they approached their dotage, they would be able to grow their own food without bending too much and it was far easier to hold her gardening classes with the wealthy escapees from frantic moneymaking that eagerly paid for the retreats Malcolm held on his compound.

Sam and his new friend Will turned up during the summer and Malcolm duly blessed them by making a video of their visit. Will, a cynical hedge monkey new ager from England, was writing Sam's new book, designed to feed from the non-religious spiritual element of the market. Malcolm had a look at it and was relieved to find it was no challenge to his own market whatsoever. None of his customers would spend long on this, he thought. Entry-level stuff. Redwood sure did love his noobs. He had done something similar when the raw vegan beauty expert, Zinca had shown some sign of success. Redwood had brought out an infomercial beauty book of Ragha products. It had been awful too. Sam was not blessed with imagination, Malcolm would chuckle to himself occasionally.

"Yeah I'd never be able to get girls like this back home. I'm what's known as a skank in En-ger-land." Will was, as usual, sounding gravelly and wasted on some 'super fantastic green' he had brought with him. He shook his limp brown dreadlocks from time to time, as if something was living in them and trying to burrow.

Malcolm could see what the appeal was for Sam. Like Barbie and her ugly neglected friend, he laughed to himself. I don't know what a skank is, but you can't write for shit, either, he thought. He was curious about it, however. "Have you actually read the book, Sam?"

"Hell no, I trust ya Will." Sam laughed. Will had started to appear during Sam's more esoteric events, speaking about the relationship between paranormal events and their impact on spiritual health. He had a rather small following. "Will's been telling me all about the masons. We've put a little pyramid on the cover, look."

"Yes, yes I see that." Malcolm suddenly could not wait for these clowns to leave. "Would you like to come and give us some advice about the garden, Sam? I really value your opinion."

The only thing Sam truly enjoyed in life was the garden, not that he saw much of his own. They talked at length about appropriate planting, pruning, seasonal variations. Malcolm wondered why they hadn't talked like this before. Suddenly Sam was a demi-god. "Have you thought about doing a book about this, Sam?"

"How many chicks do you think want to spend time with a gardening geek?" It was the first time Malcolm had seen any trace of a reality check from Sam.

"Is that all that matters?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Sam looked away, unsmiling.

Some degree of Aspergers, perhaps? Malcolm's medical brain flickered into evidence. He stopped it in his tracks by distracting himself with talk of yoga.

"I think it's time we severed contact with Degnan." Peter had returned to Oz a harder and more efficient businessman and had booked Lovely's breast op. They were sitting in Peter's mother's garden, eating watermelon.

"What's up?"

"He says he plans to do fasting retreats. He tried a couple and he says it's much better for the older people. That's against everything we've been telling them."

"Yeah, we don't want to be dealing with older people though, do we?"

"It shouldn't matter if they put the hours in. Don't make excuses for them. I hate fat lazy people."

Two days after this conversation a large red milk lorry smashed through a barrier and hit Peter. Lovely rented them a small house and continued to make videos without saying a word. Peter, for once, didn't say much either.

The doctors claimed he may not walk properly again. Peter was having none of it. Lovely was left with the job of lugging several large boxes of fruit per day into the small house since he wouldn't consider a change of diet. Thankfully the ebooks, website and youtube videos continued to provide sufficient income every month, but things were not looking so good.

"You haven't told them have you?"

"Of course not."

"Good, we can still make videos, I'll just have to be sitting down and we hide the wheelchair, right?"

"Sure."

Lovely bought some second hand gym equipment for Peter to use on his upper body, healing proceeded far in excess of what his doctors had predicted, normal for a raw vegan. After a few months he could bench press his own weight. He was, however, still unable to walk.

Peter was getting fat. Lovely didn't like fat.

Peter had broken bones and the acknowledged raw vegan expert on bone health was his arch enemy Sam Redwood.

Richard White looked at his young nephew with contempt. "I told you to keep him."

"I couldn't risk it. You know what we have to do. If he had any idea what was going on he could have turned on us. In any case, Redwood is a liability, always has been, always will be."

"He's more of a liability left in a position to undermine our plans. He could do that without even knowing he's doing it. Don't forget our aims. Now you have to find some way of growing this business or you have to dump it and buy bigger. His figures are looking good from where I'm sitting. It might be an idea to buy him back in. Honestly, after that coup with Organimarket your cousin pulled off and you go losing the goose just when we had him."

"With respect, Uncle Richard, you don't know what I had to work with." Dwayne shook his head and squeezed his eyelids together. "Unless we provided him with the Hefner mansion on wheels, we couldn't have pulled it off."

Hilary and Joe were married that year, the now famous Dr Malcolm Swartz married them, as an ordained minister of a small church in the Midwest, he was able to 'work' whilst he attended and ticket sales proved popular amongst the ardent fans. It was a charming event. They decided to move to Paraguay, and bought a spread there whilst advertising the surrounding land to other keen types.

Hilary rescued horses, and Joe worked on the business whilst enjoying life at the new gentle pace they had set themselves. They had staff for the more mundane tasks of day to day life, and they made their daily videos for the fans as more of a royal event than a chore. Life was blissful. In only a few short years Joe had created a small empire that pretty much ran itself. When they chose to, they could attend events in North America quite easily, or not, as the case may be.

Joe had clearly become a deceptively sharp operator and well worth watching.

"I don't get it, but there are some herbicide traces, son, you were right."

"What can we do?"

"Well nothing for these nettles, here are some soil kits, take a walk around the place and see if you can find a clean spot. I need to find out how that got there. It happened just this week, you say?"

"Yesterday they were OK, today they aren't."

"That means some time yesterday or the day before. OK, Johan, I'll ask around." Johan had just gone up several notches in his father's estimation.

Kira had never cried so much in her life. Every day seemed to have some new trigger. She wondered why. By the time the artwork was ready to be mounted she surmised that it must be very salty.

It wasn't like rejection was new to her, in fact she had, at times, orchestrated failure, and she had a rather cruel sense of humour herself. She couldn't work it out at all. She tried everything to move on, and failed miserably each time.

She knew it had something to do with the past few years, the transition from graduate with a career ahead of her, to the sickness and death of her friends and family, and the fact that as a carer, she had no real prospect of changing the future on her own terms. For some reason his refusal to even acknowledge her had ended a chapter of her life. She was no longer a person with a future, but a person with a past, struggling to see what life had to offer within the tiny constraints she had been presented with. Finding out that her family were not very nice people via the series of events surrounding the series of deaths hit her particularly hard and her friends, for the most part, had not been particularly helpful.

It wasn't that she couldn't take it when someone was horrible, she was used to it from her family and friends alike, but it hurt her a great deal that it seemed to her that he regarded her as mad. After years of rejection from jobs she could easily do, and relationships she could have functioned perfectly well in, she was finally rejected even in conversation by the one person that had seemed to offer hope that things could turn out well. The investment she had made in the book was a surrogate for job, children, house and pension, satisfaction in any of which she lacked and had little prospect of resolving.

She wondered how many other people had been in the same position, and felt even more sorry for Sam, which made her cry even more because if he had any idea what he was doing to his own life, never mind other people's, he would probably stop, and that would not be good either, for all the other people like herself who had no hope left.

Even if he had cared about her at all, which he evidently didn't, they were as trapped as each other. Other people would exclaim at the wonder of his apparently fun life, and she simply felt terribly sorry for him. His life looked terribly lonely. Kira always felt particularly alone in crowds. But that had been the whole point of the project in the first place. Bigger venues, a wider scope of argument, more glory and less work unless he wanted it. All she really wanted was a reason to do the work, especially since her own life was ostensibly over as far as she could see and she didn't like people very much anymore.

The twenty or so other members of the 'inner circle' finished whatever they happened to be doing in the dimly lit room and relaxed where they were. Sam started to drum on a large native African drum he was particularly fond of that particular week. They formed a circle and danced to the single drumbeat, clapping and assuming the roles of whatever they imagined a tribe to be. This was what Sam called a reasonable night's entertainment. Tomorrow was the last day of the inner circle's retreat. Few of them would have believed, the month before, that they would wind up naked together celebrating the lunar eclipse in the same room they had spent hours listening to Sam telling them about the secrets of nature.

"Will you be joining us again for the equinox?" Sam smiled sweetly at one of the participants as he stood with his bags in the morning.

"Hell yes." Umberto had not had this much fun in his entire life. The whole trip had been paced perfectly. Boy, that guy was really gifted. What a trip!

Little did the 'inner circle's spouses waiting at home realise, quite how enlightened their beloved partners were becoming from their visits to the Redwood retreat.

Anastasia had a letter. Unfortunately it was in English. She phoned around the followers until she found someone to translate for her.

She had been invited to appear with another human doll for American TV, all expenses paid and another very small fee. She jumped at it. She and Dmitri would have 4 days to enjoy seeing the USA for the first time in exchange for an appearance with a well-known American male human doll from San Francisco.

She spent the afternoon in the apartment selecting suitable clothing for the trip, to take place in four months' time. Dmitri looked on, bewildered by her sudden excitement.

Lovely quietly researched supplements for bone healing online as Peter recovered from the crash. He was still in a great deal of pain and had become considerably heavier for her to lift. Fortunately she was getting stronger from singlehandedly manhandling the boxes of fruit and was able to manage – just. She tentatively brought up the matter of the supplements with Peter. She knew he wouldn't be very happy about supplements, natural or not, because of his strict diet. All she could do was try to steer him towards fruits with sufficient nutrients to help him heal and let the doctor argue with him about what treatments were best for his legs.

"I'll bloody well do without that." Peter snapped at her when she suggested a list of things that might help him heal. She could tell, from the level of vitriol, that he was recovering, but she wondered if there was anything they were missing to help him walk again. The additional weight wouldn't help, she thought. She tried cutting his banana ration to stop him gaining, but still he seemed to get heavier every day, and he was always hungry. She tried cheering him up by taking him outside, but of course, since he didn't want anyone to see him in a wheelchair, never mind so fat, he preferred to stay indoors. Lovely herself noticed it was getting harder to not gain, as she wasn't able to cycle or be out as much as she used to be. She was stuck in with Peter watching loud sporting events on TV. This was particularly hard on her when she looked in the mirror. She felt guilty for worrying about it, and guilty for the nice new tits, which made Lovely feel very sad.

Sam, knowing nothing about the accident, sued Peter over a number of satirical videos he had made. He was hurt and confused at Peter's continuing vendetta, which seemed to have become more rather than less furious of late. Opinion amongst the fans varied pretty much by national boundary.

"Suing is terribly American."

Hilary and Joe were in Peru, researching new products for their empire. A new berry with magical properties had been 'discovered' by an enterprising farmer. Hilary and Joe duly did their best to find some traditional history of its use, but were able to discover precisely nothing. A wasted, and rather expensive trip. They had been conned. Infuriated, they took a well-deserved holiday.

Kira's weight loss had stopped dead. She tried to rally briefly in July and started work on an online network along the lines of the book that she couldn't face looking at. Creating a website was mind-numbing, she found, but she knew this was a better hope of getting people to take action based upon the very serious and possibly over-heavy to be popular, book. Being an artist made her confident that, although she couldn't face working on the book at the moment because of her misery, ostensibly over the Sam issue, she could get on with other projects bit by tiny bit. Finally, in a state of utter despair, she settled on making Sam the final panel of her key artwork.

"You like the pink one, don't you." Her mother was almost blind "You touch it differently." This made Kira weep again. When would the weeping stop? The whole thing was ridiculous. Ghost, her online friend even thought it was ridiculous and he had had several online affairs. Kira had never seen the point in such nonsense so why she was letting this upset her so much when her entire interaction with Sam had been a few indirect sentences was a mystery.

The artwork had taken seven years to complete. It was the key piece of a collection Kira had been building for years, about love as a creative process rather than the usual time-killing exercise in futility, based upon Plato's Symposium, a book she had urged all of her muses to read. Love as divine inspiration rather than 'bestial' demand. She honestly believed he would understand it, being a worker rather than a traditionalist. It was a screen, hinged so that it could physically cuddle you, and a cushion so that you could hide inside it.

Kira decided to offer it to Sam, and thus kill several birds with one stone. Break her run of bad luck, give him a gift and move on to complete the rest of the work.

On Christmas Day that year she made him a video announcing that she wanted him to have it.

Ghost, her last remaining friend, who hated Sam with untold passion for no reason Kira could fathom, decided he could no longer be friends with her as a result of this 'crazy' gesture. Kira was now entirely alone.

Sam probably didn't even see the video. When she emailed his agent to request an office postal address to send it, she was told that she couldn't have one. She tried explaining about the book, the business, the investors she had wanted to involve in the business, and that the gift was an important gesture.

"Thanks for reaching out." was the exceptionally rude response from the bitter neglected agent, who hadn't had her dose of Sam sex therapy for months.

Kira knew that to some extent, this was a difference in culture, that unless she waved a large wad of cash under their noses, she would continue to be treated like shit. Yanks don't understand finer feelings nearly as well as they understand hard cash, she thought. A paradox of the feudal class system is that it keeps the wealthy civilised and reasonably humble in general conversation with nobodies, enabling the world to continue to function.

Kira the academic and now Kira the artist had now officially been deemed worthless by a supposedly motivational speaker. She had allowed herself to be persuaded to survive in order to be completely destroyed by her one good reason for continuing to live, it seemed.

Sam looked at himself in the mirror after he closed the lid on the earth toilet with some relief. He looked old. He could see grey hair. He was bored. It was not one of his better days. He was in Bali, at a yoga event for the over-privileged, overpaid and over-aged consumers that flocked to exotic locations every year to mingle and enjoy secretive escapes from their very normal lives.

Sam as a rule, loved people. His quest to encourage the bored and unmotivated hoards to take control of their health and live happier lives was evidence enough of that. It was simply much easier to sell them products and courses than persuade them any other way. People do love to consume, and buying something is so much easier than actually thinking. Sam had learned this the hard way, after several idealistic years of trying to persuade them to network market the products he passionately believed in.

His self-depreciating sex habit was not because he didn't like women, on the contrary, Sam was a little scared of them and wanted them to have whatever they wanted. What they wanted, since he had become famous, tended to be a notch on the bedpost with his name on it which it was easy and pleasurable enough to provide. Persuading people of either gender to drop their inhibitions was not difficult for him at all, in fact.

The book with Will had not been particularly well received although he had received the usual 'you've changed our lives' fan mail, which he did not read. He felt it was really Will's book, and Will had got boring quite quickly. Sam was fond of meditation and yoga, but not a big believer in psychic healing or paranormal events.

Sam reflected briefly that it might be nice to cuddle one of his children now and again. He had had a vasectomy after the first twenty three opportunists had dropped one or two on him. Mercifully, they didn't seem inclined to publicise it as long as they were well provided for. He wasn't too interested in seeing the mothers for the most part, but the children he missed greatly. Much as he admired Alexander the Great, however, he didn't want to match his fertility record and he hadn't even attempted to explain the sheer volume of her grandchildren to his mother. All he really wanted to do was work.

He didn't really like the look of this week's crop of hopefuls, but yoga provided endless opportunity for both him and them to exchange wordless promises, and so it was that Sam had serviced two of his clients the day before, and thought sadly that he was likely to be kept similarly occupied for the rest of the week. The people who paid for these courses were rich and persistent. It seemed to him sometimes that he had very little control over anything that happened to him.

He cheered himself up by pretending to be a faintly nasty female performance artist called Wanda on his fanpage for an hour before returning to the organisation of the SuperSupermeet, an event designed to provide months of opportunities for ticket and product sales. 'I am a supersupergenius,' Sam reminded himself as he tapped away on his netbook. He sipped on some particularly disgusting tea, sent to him by yet another opportunistic yippie smallfry and vetoed it in the strongest possible terms before settling for mineral water.

Malcolm was very happy to see Robin Swayze at the compound. He welcomed him into the now whitewashed main house and showed him around the thriving garden area before they settled down to chat.

"How are things going since Stoic?"

"Well, I'm not rich, Malcolm, but I can say what I want and I don't have to put up with Barry Crispin anymore. I'm no longer vegan, by the way. I hope that isn't a problem."

"That's going to be interesting during classes. Are you still raw?"

"Oh yes, it's just a little raw goats milk. You don't have a goat, do you?" Robin looked around with great seriousness, as if searching for the goat somewhere in the room.

"Sorry no. The classes you are doing this week are mainly diabetics. Would you mind not mentioning it?"

"Well I've kind of admitted it on video. How about I mention it and then talk about more general stuff?"

"Yeah, that sounds OK." Malcolm was relieved. Robin was a stickler for his integrity, but an admission of goat's milk shouldn't upset the classes too much.

Anastasia's plane touched down in LA on a muggy afternoon in September. She still didn't speak a lot of English, but she was wildly excited. Dmitri was a bit disturbed by her enthusiasm. Surely she couldn't be serious about a move to America? Dmitri could think of nothing worse. Too many fat, overdressed, over-friendly people and, today at least, far too hot. She checked her makeup for the hundredth time in a small mirror before they could leave the plane on the off-chance anyone would photograph her, but no one was there. Just a car and driver had been sent, to take them to the hotel to relax for the evening before her TV appearance. Dmitri was relieved. Not that famous yet, he thought. The idea of losing her shouldn't worry an 'open husband,' but it did.

The event was packed out. She had to stand and pose with a man who had had, even by Anastasia's standards, rather a lot of plastic surgery and who apparently hated her. She couldn't actually talk to him, since her English was still extremely limited and he, naturally, didn't speak Ukrainian, but she was well aware that he didn't like her at all.

Anastasia, having been pilloried in the Ukrainian press, stoically got through the event by resorting to glum faced doll mode. Thank goodness for Dmitri, waiting in the wings, she thought. America seemed just as hateful as home. "Fake! Fake!" they shouted.

At the back of the audience, Gary Bocelli clapped loudly. "Beautiful! Bravo!" He was, quite literally, Anastasia's biggest fan. Gary was five hundred pounds, however, so he didn't want to block the view for the other fans. He found a small step at the back of the room that he guessed would take his weight to stand on.

She talked at length, whilst being translated by an overexcited frowsy woman wearing inappropriate fur boots, about the ease with which she had achieved her seemingly impossible looks. She did this often, completely unaware that she was making something that most 'experts' made look impossible, very easy. Anastasia could have made millions out of pretending that her looks were hard to achieve. Instead she would sulk, shrug and repeat that it was very simple, "Liquid raw diet" she would repeat, which nobody seemed to want to dwell on. Instead they would go on and on about her plastic surgery, which in fact had been minimal. Why was everyone so obsessed with spending money? She really wanted to talk about her music and mystic experiences, but no one seemed to want to let her.

She had scored one unwitting success, however. Gary resolved that day never to eat cooked food again.

Johan wondered about the wisdom of what he was about to do, but he did it anyway.

"Can I have the bottom fields?"

"What for, son, they are grazing land, and those trees at the bottom mean you can't grow much there?"

"I'd like to see if I can encourage wild food. I'll go find the plants we need, and we can see if they will take if I actually plant them."

"You think they will sell?"

"A lot of my fans are in cities, they love the books and the courses, but they don't get to use the information much. I want to let them try the stuff I write about." Johan felt as if he were ten years old again, asking for a transformers' toy.

"I'll have to give it a bit of thought son, I don't know where I'd put the cows. By the way, there was a stripe of herbicide dumped on my land by the farm thirty miles down. I tracked down the source after a few phone calls. Some maniac down there is using Whiteinc GM crops and a leaking crop spray plane."

"Can you sue?"

"Not sure it's worth it unless the other neighbours want to make it a joint case. We only lost a few hundred dollarsworth. I sure let him have it over the phone though. Well done for spotting it."

"White industries seem to want to poison the whole country. Don't these stupid farmers realise modifying a gene in agricultural crops means nature compensates for it by modifying the genes all down the line? They've already found GM compensating weeds and insects."

"All they see is the money. It's up to organic farmers like us to make sure as much of the food supply is safe from these 'superparasites' as possible. White industries will just keep making more chemical solutions, and more genetic modifications until the good ole' boys on the big operations are producing food which is not only inedible but unrecognisable, all for White's profit margins. We just have to pray for 'em and hope we can protect our own." At least Johan's father agreed with him about some things. "We have to count ourselves lucky that other countries have seen the light and banned them outright, otherwise the entire global agricultural supply could be contaminated with genes requiring White Industry chemicals before we know it. As it is, North America is already in bad trouble."

"If you look at it next to battery farms with animals sick from eating cheap GM grain it's pretty frightening isn't it? It really scares me that people have to eat that stuff."

"Not so nice for the beasts either, son. At least ours get a bit of a life before they go to market. Did you see that cow down at the lake swimming last year? I tried to tell this guy about it at the farmer's meet. Intensive dairy farmer and he point blank refused to believe me when I told him cattle could swim. He'd probably keel over and die if he stopped to watch them socialising. I don't suppose you'll keep the livestock after we're gone?"

"I don't know dad. The manure is good, and there's a market for raw milk, but you know my heart's not really in sending them to their deaths."

"They get a better life here. You have to bear in mind it's not just for you. You can't change the world, son, but you can protect your own. Whilst they're here, they're in our care, and I don't just mean veterinarians." Johan's dad was slightly encouraged by the possibility that Johan would keep some cattle for the premium quality grass fed manure and raw milk 'as God and nature intended,' as he thought, so he tried to press the point home. There are other ways of keeping the land natural, you know. Harvey Davies has a shooting estate sixty miles up the road. You should take a look at his wild food supply." He shot Johan a teasing smile.

"I couldn't do that dad. I just couldn't kill anything or take money for that."

"Well, I'm sure Harvey would be pleased to see you. He hasn't seen you since you were a boy. I'm sure you'll find some interesting plants up there. That land's not been touched with chemicals or anything for sixty years or more."

"You've got a point there, dad." Johan looked at his father, frowning. His father smiled contentedly into his book. Maybe the land would be safe from the insidious invasion of White industries genetically modified industrial agriculture after all.

"You can have the fields, son. I'll think of something. I think we should go up and see Harvey, though. Just for a beer or something."

"I don't drink beer."

Johan's father rolled his eyes.

At last Lovely pulled up outside the house in the van they had bought for still-hiding Peter so that they could get out occasionally. It had been eight months since the accident. Peter, through sheer strength of will, was now able to get on his feet for a few minutes at a time before he would collapse back onto whatever was nearest to catch him. Lovely was now on her own with producing the essential youtube videos that constituted their income. They had increased their income by multiplying the number of channels, but putting the same videos on all of them, trebling the hits with new tagging on all the channels. Monthly income, thereby, was slightly up despite the number of actual videos being down. Their official stories varied from; 'Peter is in Thailand training for a race' to; 'Peter is busy on a public speaking tour.' The reality was that Peter was now so fat that he could not appear, even photoshopped frame by frame, in his own videos.

Today however, both Peter and Lovely were delighted to take delivery of Peter's new exercise bike. He reasoned that since he could stand, he could probably manage a few seconds on the bike, and, being a bloody minded Auzzie, he resolved to try this as often as he could.

The screams weren't nice to listen to. Lovely, having tried to stop him, would go out in the van until fifteen minutes had elapsed, then return to administer the pain killing gels that made his struggle bearable. She was very glad he was fighting the ominous diagnosis, but since both were aware that it was highly unlikely that he would be cycling professionally again, they wondered quite what the future was going to be.

Peter remained cheerful. "It's OK Lovely, once I've got my legs back, I can start making videos about recovering from disaster and the numbers will go up even more."

Lovely wasn't sure about this, but hoped he was right, since her waist had got at least 3 inches bigger since his accident and so she didn't really enjoy doing the bikini videos anymore. She was enjoying slightly more freedom since he was now able to go to the toilet by himself but she hadn't managed to solve the bikini problem quite yet.

She was glad, however, that Peter was the most stubborn pig-headed man in the world.

Zeb Toledo strutted across the lawn from the helicopter, ignoring the mobile ringing in his pocket. He wanted to see Bethany before doing any more business today. His beautiful wife came first just once a day, and coming in the door was a crucial moment for anyone's wellbeing.

Bethany ran to the door to meet him. She had read somewhere in the dim and distant past that men liked this, and pleasing Zeb was all that she had to worry about.

After their routine hug of delight, Bethany looked up. "Have you heard from Norm?"

"No, I just ignored a call from him. Problem?" Zeb removed his sunglasses, squinting down at her.

"You can call him back after a drink. It sounds important."

Zeb followed Bethany inside and they silently enjoyed their daily drink together in the verdant solarium. It was a pace-changing routine they had set years before. Nothing must ever interfere with the half hour when Zeb arrived home.

"Oh God. Yes.....No, don't do that, I'll have a chat with the lawyers and get back to you." Zeb was reeling. Two of his fans had been taken to hospital from one of his satellite events. An enthusiastic course leader had kept them too long in the 'hot tank,' an endurance event which 'took you to your inner limit' in order to improve your self-motivation and profit making potential. Zeb had made only one brief appearance at this event, but it had his name all over it. He would have to think of a positive outcome to announce from it, alongside calculating how much it was going to cost him in lost revenue and compensation. "Give me the name of the trainer and the location?

Sam flicked on his laptop. He was naked. He had just finished a rather small health food event, not even really worth doing for the money, but anything to keep the ball rolling. Sam liked to work, as Kira had once put it, like a 'blind man running at a wall.' He wanted to check his email in case the TV company had got in touch. They had.

Dear Mr Redwood,

The backing material for our show is now complete. If you could bring your team in to complete the filming between the twentieth and twenty fifth, and have your people let us know your needs.

It's so great to be working with you. We love your work. It's so good to know you are with us on this project.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Mirabelle Goodson

Mirabelle, thought Sam excitedly, what a foxy name, I wonder what she's like? It was getting a bit cold in the hotel room, so he picked up one of his longer tops and draped it over his lap.

He looked at the homepage. The news about Zeb caught his eye. He thought about calling him to offer commiserations and then remembered the reference to his birthday. It was only June. He felt a bit small. He twiddled a nipple briefly and called down to reception. "Is that Julie? What time do you finish?"

She wasn't due to finish for an hour so he pretended to be an irritated yogi from the Punjab for a while on his fanpage and toyed with the idea of dressing. The rest of his work was all taken care of. He had just finished absent-mindedly smothering himself in coconut oil when she knocked on the door. Damn he had forgotten! Maybe she would like that? He deftly dived in to the ensuite to put the shower on and stick a towel over himself before he answered the door.

Julie, hotel receptionist, aged twenty two, was rather surprised when a very oily and slightly chubby older man in a small towel with dry hair and a running shower invited her inside. She politely said nothing about it and remained looking cool whilst enjoying a rampant fit of the inward giggles while Sam hurriedly got dressed in the bathroom. She liked him already.

Kira knew on some level that the mistake she had been making for years was letting the people around her determine her self-worth. Her friends had never had much confidence, so it wasn't terribly surprising that they had no confidence in her.

Sam had not seen the artwork that he turned down and he hadn't even done that personally. She arranged to make a pop video, in which she thought she would feature the artwork so that he could at least see it. She realised that an apology was unlikely to be forthcoming given that he had now had nearly two years to talk to her following the mysterious blocking episode, but she thought, what was the point in spending seven years on an artwork and not showing it to anyone, and how dare this guy be so rude when he regularly told his fans to be nice to people in case they were useful? It wasn't even just about her now, she had made such a fuss that other people had been in touch, including one who had paid to see him, to say he had done something similar to them. One of them even suggested he was married as the reason for the blockings, but Kira doubted that was true. If Redwood was in love, she thought, the whole world would hear about it with tiresome regularity. In any case, why should that stop him speaking to her? She wasn't even in the same country?

Two years she had spent on the first book, before she had spoken to him at all, several months grinding away on the website and seeking out now defunct, thanks to Redwood's agent, investors, and then a further year on the artwork, and still he didn't seem to be able to show her the tiniest bit of courtesy. She had, every so often, made a video directed at him but none of them really made sense even to her. She just knew she was very hurt and couldn't understand why communication, which had seemed abundantly clear before, was now impossible. She had seen him completely ignore a male academic who was trying to work with him, so she didn't think it was a gender issue. Nationality possibly? There was no way of knowing but since it had happened she had been so angry and upset that it was now impossible to imagine communicating with him anyway.

She remembered years before, a corporate scandal she had unearthed where a huge company had not been able to be seen to take advice from her because she had been employed as a data processor. She had been told at the time that unless she charged them for the information as a consultant, they couldn't be seen to take it. That situation had ended up with the company stealing the information from her car before firing her, rather than admit they had a problem. She had won out in the end, by calmly enabling the removal of the CEO from outside the company amidst her friends and family trying everything from calling her a liar, to suggesting she was crazy, but their reaction then had been absurd too. Denial is much easier than admitting a problem for most people, which is how corruption thrives and how entire economies crumble. 'Yes' men, employ 'yes' men, employ 'yes' men. Crushing the confidence out of most of the population via debt or inadequate emotion reduces contention too. The only way to survive these things was to ignore everything and bulldoze your way through the bullshit.

She was aware of still having oddly emotional feelings for the guy, but since she had stopped watching him a couple of years before in case that fed it, she wouldn't even allow herself to look at a photograph of him. She wasn't sure if this was helping or making things worse. She was even surer now that her decision to never meet him was the right one, but how to resolve this issue about the work? The work was all that really mattered in the first place. There was no point in her tangling herself up in running a giant network with no focus for her. If she couldn't clarify the issue to him about the work, the work would not achieve its aim, and she had spectacularly failed to communicate this to him at all, despite many and varied attempts. This was more of an intuitive issue, she had felt very strongly this was the cause of his significance to her. No matter what her former friends thought about the superiority of fame, Sam was more of a case of taking notoriety and turning it into glory for the joy of having done it. No matter what they thought about Sam, he was made for greater things than even he would ever realise, the only thing she was quite sure of. Did it really matter that much, if he was so much of an idiot that he couldn't manage a simple discourse? She thought it did. Kira had never been afraid of being disliked, she reasoned, so she wasn't afraid of dealing with people she wasn't necessarily best friends with.

All Kira really needed, she eventually decided, was to stop being around weak people and working in terrible jobs for pin money and finally allow herself to be defined in the hope of being taken more seriously. "Shun the weak." as Harry had said, many times. Ironic, it was on the artwork, the context of rejection - "I remain free to be undefined." She had predicted her own downfall even as she orchestrated it. She smiled at this neat bit of self-delusion of control over anything.

She had a lot of artwork and a pile of old stuff to sell, so she set about the stuff first. Next would be the shop for the artwork, and whilst preparing that, she thought, she would write her first novel. What she really wanted was Global cultural economic theory, but in the meantime, due to the lack of any recognisable feedback from anyone, some art and scandal would do. She had no reason to care about the future of humanity, since she didn't see much of a future for herself.

Gary Bocelli, Anastasia's five hundred pound fan, had been as good as his word. The first few weeks he was eating nuts by the handful, but the loss of additives from the pre-packaged food he was used to were gone so he lost one hundred pounds very quickly. He joined all the usual raw food forums and learned more about his diet.

The second hundred pounds was more difficult, but still reasonably rapid as he had learned not to eat nuts by the handful and was slowly increasing the amount of vegetables in his diet.

By the time he was two hundred and fifty pounds he was able to take up walking and had started socialising at raw food events offline, meeting the people that later provided him with further contacts to help him in his new life. His weight loss had slowed by this time to a snail's pace, and so he took up juicing. Still a young man, he bathed in MSM to help his skin shrink with his weight loss. He started a website and began to take speaking engagements to help other people with an extreme weight problem.

When this stopped working, Gary water fasted for one hundred days until he finally reached his goal of one hundred and sixty pounds, whereupon he took up tantric yoga and was rarely heard from. He credited many of his new friends and particularly his new American business contacts for his weight loss, but he didn't once think to mention Anastasia.

Anastasia, entirely unaware, continued to spend her days uploading ten second youtube videos of her waist from her mobile and photoshopping suitably off-the-wall pictures of herself for her stream on Facebook. Just enough to get the ad to appear, and her fans duly clicked. Enough for her to live on, and no more.

The baby's screams were deafening and wouldn't stop. Joe and Hilary looked at each other in despair and called one of the nannies.

"What's wrong with her?"

"She's a baby. That's what babies do. It's probably healthy. They do this a lot when they are new. Something to do with the lungs."

"How long does it go on for?"

"About three years, give or take." The nanny smiled patronisingly and picked up the tiny baby. The crying stopped.

"Phew." Joe went outside and sat in the garden with some relief. It was times like this he missed his football buddies.

It had not been a good month for Malcolm, although his trees were growing beautifully around the main house and he was very pleased, thanks to Sam, at the results in the garden. Several irate and very overweight diabetics had left the course early because they couldn't stand the food. Malcolm felt a bit deflated. One of the remaining course participants unknowingly comforted him when they expressed their untold delight at not having to buy insulin any more. She was a very large black lady who had struggled with her medication costs for years. Now she was loudly saying she planned to use her apartment balcony to grow food to reduce her grocery bill and how marvellous she felt. Out of the thirty original participants, only twelve had managed to get through the entire month without making any mistakes, complaining or making an outright escape. Worse, one wag had announced this defeat online, and so now there was a record of it forever.

Malcolm wondered what on earth they wanted? They were well informed in the course handout what they could and could not eat, and they wouldn't get a better opportunity not to cheat than being thirty miles from the nearest grocery store.

How to resolve the motivation issue, he pondered? Spirituality clearly wasn't enough for everyone. Part of the problem was that going straight onto a raw diet from the normal food they expected alongside their usual doses of insulin was causing them to become dizzy, tired and extremely grumpy, and Malcolm's prescription of lectures, yoga and sun worship wasn't quite cutting it.

There had to be an answer. Malcolm decided to meditate on it.

Zeb wasn't out of trouble yet. A further incident at one of his 'rebirth by fire' events had created another three lawsuits. He was all over the internet for three days before he managed to regain control of the media output. Remarkably, he managed to curtail the reports in under a week, but for some potential devotees, the damage was done.

The magic of Zeb Toledo evidently had limits, after all. Takings were plummeting and booking statistics did not look good. Zeb was, of course, a long way from destitution, but two hits in a row when Zeb was globally recognised was far from good news. Zeb decided to take his perfect wife to Morocco, to their small lime-washed mansion in the hills, and spend a couple of weeks in the pool to rethink his strategy.

It was a beautiful day, the sun shone, the trees shivered in the breeze and the water softly burbled in the middle distance. Dwayne was playing golf at his very expensive club near Beverly Hills. He had bought another three health food businesses that week. He wondered what it was like to be considered the successful child of the family. Being paid to discredit an industry was not his idea of rip-roaring success, but Dwayne was not a natural rebel. White Industries now had a five percent stake in the American health food market, and since their share was still staggering along in profit as per Richard's instructions and they had another couple of major players in their pockets, they now had a little natural health specialising lobbyist in Washington.

Dwayne supposed that by the time the other operators in the industry had sufficient understanding of the big picture to fight back, it would be too late and he would be considered a success within the family, but he was tired of being thought of as the family stooge. He idly wondered, as he took his put, what would happen if he rebelled. He looked down at his increasing girth as he missed the seventeenth hole. Maybe he should try some of his own products? He laughed to himself as he pictured himself appearing at Uncle Richard's breakfast table in a bandana and tie dyed shorts. It was all in his name, there really wasn't any reason why he should play along with the family plans, he thought.

"No harm in exploring the possibilities." He said to the caddy brightly. The caddy, who was a bit bored of watching Dwayne play golf badly and had no idea what he was talking about, smiled encouragingly in anticipation of his customary tip.

Peter wondered if now was a good time to tell his followers the truth. He had been getting around the problem by doing all the website and coaching work whilst Lovely made the videos, but lately, since she was less glamorous as a result of caring for him, she was becoming increasingly reluctant to make any. His weight was dropping, but he was still, by comparison with his previous appearance, grossly overweight.

"No, it's not time yet, Peter. You can't let them down like this." Lovely was horrified by the idea. "If you want me to keep going with the videos I will, but you can't let them see you like that."

"I don't want you to be unhappy, Lovely."

"I'm happy, Peter, as long as you keep getting well and you aren't under any pressure? Let's just keep things as they are, I'll get out and lose some weight and we'll keep going with the swimsuit videos. How is your inspirational recovery book going?"

"It's not bad actually. Want a read?"

"No, thanks, I'll wait until it's finished." Lovely was not one of the world's avid readers. She was quite sure that Peter would write the best inspirational recovery book ever. She decided not to bother with bananas today. She wasn't throwing up at all anymore, since Peter was in the house all the time, but she was really fed up with her new 'ordinary' body. The sooner he was on a real bike the better. He was now able to manage almost an hour on the exercise bike without screaming.

Sam was in make-up, preparing for his commercial video. The make-up lady was in her mid-fifties, he supposed, a neat figure with carefully dyed and styled black hair. He hadn't been out for a couple of weeks since there had been no appointments, retreats or yoga bookings. "Would you mind locking the door? I feel a bit exposed." He knew that admission of vulnerability was endlessly intoxicating for the ladies.

"Sure." Sandy, a non-raw food devotee who had been exercise addicted since her teens assumed that he was genuinely nervous and did as she was asked.

"That's a really great figure you've got. What do you eat?"

"I'm low carb, have been for years. It's really the gym that does it." Sandy was justifiably proud of her nipped waist, the result of a nightly corset and daily gym visit.

"Can I see your thighs? They look really amazing." Sam bit his lip and looked at her roguishly.

"Sure." Sandy, catching on, decided to humour him in a moment of impulsive naughtiness and slowly, inch by inch, raised her skirt.

"Little bit higher?" Sam looked up at her, still biting his lip. Sandy's best black knickers were now on display. "That fabric, what is it?"

"You're interested in ladies underwear?" Sandy was starting to laugh. "Would you like to see my bra too, it matches?"

"That would be very sweet of you. Yes I'm truly fascinated by this particular fabric. You're very kind."

Sandy, now with her blouse unbuttoned to the waist with her skirt somewhere around her stomach smiled indulgently whilst Sam closely inspected the 'absolutely amazing' material of her lingerie. She hadn't had this much fun in at least a fortnight.

She blinked a lot when he got to running his finger under the lace. She was even more pleasantly surprised when she saw her breasts out of the bra and dangling in the mirror as she was rear-ended over the make-up counter. "Oh my."

"This lingerie is truly magnificent from both sides." pondered Sam studiously. "Truly magnificent."

Harvey Davies was an incredibly strong man. Even through his thick shirt he rippled as he walked. He also smelt of whisky, unfortunately, but it didn't seem to affect his physique, whatever he was drinking. Johan and his father watched him stride around the land he had known since birth with the ease of one of his own deer. Johan had already spotted several species he was interested in and they had discussed a regular harvest.

"Tell you what Johan, I have more than enough business, if you turned the farm over to wild land, you could harvest the wild food while I extended my hunting and fishing operation here. We could give that some thought."

"I don't think I could have any part in hunting."

"Son, we are trying to come up with a way for us all to get what we want. You want wild plant food, I want the farm safe, Harvey wants to expand."

"There must be another way to do it." Johan remained stubborn.

"It's OK George, let him be." Harvey could see the old man's frustration. "He needs to think about it. There's no hurry yet, is there?"

"You never can tell, Harvey, you never can tell." The old man stooped and coughed for full dramatic effect and noted with satisfaction the alarm on Johan's face. 'Carpe diem', he thought. "You never know what's going to happen, son."

Harvey caught on immediately. "Yeah, George, I know what you mean." He said in a resigned tone. "And here's me with no son, either." He put a comforting arm around George and they both turned away from Johan to conceal their slight smirks.

Kira couldn't bear to watch Sam's commercial. He had ended up making two, one as himself, another, a kind of media-normalised version. Both were unspeakably ghastly. The 'Austin Powers' shirt he had clearly chosen himself, had a frankly repulsive collar height in the first version, the lumpy over-tight one that had presumably been forced upon him in the second equally bad. What she heard of the words before she gave up was not palatable to her either. 'How sad' she thought, thinking of the magnificent plans she had for giant stadium events and inevitably, cried some more. This was getting her nowhere. She needed to get the plans underway even if she had to take care of the whole damn thing herself.

The comments under the commercials on youtube were very interesting. Sam was bringing health to an entirely new market, one of people who did not see much beyond their televisions, and who bought, in some volume evidently, based upon what they considered to be 'popular' and 'normal.' Sam had done the right thing, she thought. It was not the end of the world, by a long shot. Naturally the former fans thought it was a scandal, but who cared about that. Everything seemed to be a scandal for these people. All that really mattered was that more fat, sick people would start to think about getting well, on that at least, she and Sam agreed.

Perhaps she should just accept that the path had split, not that it had ever really been together. She still wasn't sure why she was quite so hung up on Sam. He was like a combination of the two worst relationships she had ever had, all rolled up into one awful person. The thing with promiscuous men, as she had said some months ago to Ghost, was that they most feared emotional intimacy. Once you broke through that, it was like being the best woman in the whole world. They would still be incredibly unfaithful, of course, but at least you had the comfort of knowing that they would always come back because you, at least on some level at least, were better. She guessed that it was a case of hating being wrong – she didn't like having her trust violated, so the best way of avoiding it was to start out with the premise that it was going to be. That seemed a bit sad really. A bit tragic, and a bit self-defeating since she had started out wanting nothing apart from a brief conversation and didn't even get that.

On the other hand, it kind of ruled out a lot of basic problems other people had with more basic relationships. You didn't have to worry about jealousy, for example, because you were inevitably right. She remembered one particularly amusing scene where she, as a tiny twenty four year old, had held off an enormous, irate husband from his attempts to kill her boyfriend at the time, knowing full well that he was seeing the man's wife and she wasn't supposed to know about it anymore than he was. She had been amused at his incoherence at the time, the poor bewildered man didn't seem to know whether to break it to her or not.

She wished that Sam didn't matter, and wondered, as she worked on her novel, why on earth he still did. She had, after all, never had any intention of even seeing this person, never mind any of that. What a lot of soul searching over nothing. She pondered the nature of what people refer to as 'chemistry' and decided that it evidently wasn't anything to do with biology at all.

Malcolm rang off the call from Sam and beamed at Valerie.

"That man is a genius! A genius!"

Valerie was bemused. Sam was many things, she did not think a genius was one of them. "What on earth did he say?" She turned to water her tomatoes.

"I'll talk to you about it later I need to go and make plans!" Malcolm was suddenly elated and rushed off to his office. He picked up the phone and first dialled Joe, then Don, then, in a fit of over-excited joy, Gary Bocelli. Fantastic!

Zeb had a couple of months off, so he tried to relax, but found he was having some difficulties. Sleeping and chest pains, mainly. The new events weren't selling so well. His doctor suggested he was suffering from acid indigestion as a result of stress. What should he do? He could ask 'yacking Sam' he supposed, but it still wasn't August and he rather enjoyed the thought of his last belittling anti-motivational conversation with him. After a characteristically swift search online, he found Dr Malcolm Swartz. Anti-stress retreat. That might do it, and although it was a raw food retreat, sucky Sam need know nothing about it. He picked up the rather flashy gold phone in his cavernous grey silk marble hall and dialled in his booking.

Dwayne put down his fork and called the waiter over. "I'm so sorry, may I order a rare fillet steak?" He really couldn't face another day of salad. He was prepared to admit that he had felt a little better since he had attempted to improve his diet, but the lure of perfectly cooked steak at the five star restaurant was too much for him. "A little pesto and parmesan, yes."

Richard White laughed. "Not giving up the meat yet then? Dwayne isn't a health food junkie after all, everyone!"

The White family were gathered around the table for one of the larger festivities. Varying degrees of evil were represented, from genetic modification to chemical production, to marketing, to business strategy specialists. The White family had employed the methods of Philip the Good to incorporate all facets of the business through family links, from marriage to multiple affairs with progeny.

They all cheered dutifully and took a unified swig of champagne.

Dwayne didn't really want his steak by the time it arrived, but he smiled at them all and ate it anyway. He decided it might be time for a long vacation away from the family before the next part of his allotted project.

"Perhaps I could use the house in Hawaii at the end of the month, Richard? Just for a few weeks R and R?"

"Of course Dwayne, we can't have you tired during your next task, can we?"

Malcolm worked like a man possessed to prepare the land for his event. The earth mover was brought in again to flatten a large area behind the garden, a pagoda was built, and three of the outbuildings were prepared for the speakers and higher paying guests to stay in. The diabetes festival was not going to be easy to manage alongside his anti-stress retreat, he thought, but it shouldn't be impossible.

Valerie had her doubts. "Shouldn't we postpone one of them?"

"We could, but we would have to use the savings for the mortgage this month. It's OK, the anti stress residents should be far enough away in the lodges."

"What if they actually want to participate? I don't think there is much that's anti-stress about a speaking event?" Valerie did have a point, two hundred tents containing diabetics for a week was not likely to be considered anti-stress by many of the far wealthier customers in the lodges. Malcolm resolved to ask around, and promptly forgot. When he finally remembered, he shrugged. He had a lot of land.

Anastasia looked at the dull scrub land stretched out in front of her. Dmitri was measuring out the dry patch in the middle of the field.

"We need to build a road, Ana, that is the only problem with this area."

"Yes, we build a road, and a path here and plant trees in the wet area."

"You know what a ha-ha is?"

"Ha- ha?"

"Yes, it was used by English aristocrats in gardens. We can build a ha-ha on the wet area, put trees behind, then the land stays dry."

"You are very clever Dmitiri."

Anastasia and Dmitri had just taken possession of their new land, an old farm near the city where they currently lived. The old farmhouse was a wreck, but in this field, they thought, they could start their mystical village for the customers of Anastasia's courses, where the international fans of her photos and videos could also come and visit. A new home, and a new centre for operations. There was a similar, beautiful village in Siberia that Anastasia had researched, hand built by the residents. Anastasia hoped, however, that in this case the mystics and fans would pay for Dmitri and her to build their perfect mystical utopia. Anastasia's training in architecture and Dmitri's expertise in building and landscaping would at last be used for something they wanted, for a change. Life was looking sweet. The land here was extremely fertile for growing vegetables, too. They could create their dream.

Johan's father put the finishing touches on his will, and signed it off.

"Thank the good lord for Harvey."

His wife was not so sure. "He can't change the rules on us, can he?"

"No, no, it's absolutely tight with the lawyer. Harvey gets operational use of the land, provided Johan is named owner and harvests both spreads. This way Johan gets to do what he likes with his wild plants, and Harvey keeps it in profit. Win-win, really."

"What happens when Harvey dies?"

"That's up to Harvey and Johan. Johan gets this place anyway, if Harvey wants he can leave him his, now it's just up to Johan to make a goddamn profit out of his wild plants. Either way I can stop worrying about it now. You need to persuade Johan to have a son already, he's getting a bit past it to be single."

"I'll try, George, I'll try." Johan's mother wondered gloomily if she knew any amazing women that could distract Johan from his amazing wild plants.

The evening sunlight streamed into the airy bedroom from the horse paddock. Joe was packing for his trip to the Swartz ranch. Hilary wasn't going.

"What are you going to do about the letter?" Hilary was perched on the lilac coverlet she currently favoured on the bed. She didn't like being away from Joe at all, but it was only a week, and the baby, in addition to the horses, needed her.

"From Dwayne White? Nothing, we don't need to do anything."

"We don't have to give a definitive 'no' at some point?"

Joe turned to look at her. He was dreading leaving Hilary for one second, never mind a week. "The only downside of getting that letter was that it means that we can't ever float the company. We are stuck with a very successful company that we weren't planning to sell anyway. It's not a problem, sweetpea."

"I can't help feeling that he won't leave it there."

"He won't do anything this week, he's in Hawaii until September. Besides, Dwayne isn't exactly Mr Hardcore businessman. His valuation was like totally massive, someone else will bite his hands off."

"That's what worries me. Why is a White so interested in the health food business?" Hilary was troubled.

"It's nothing we have to worry about this week, babydoll."

The driver called from the main room. Joe zipped his bag, hugged Hilary and made for the door.

"I'll call you when I arrive."

"OK."

Annette looked at herself in the full length mirror with some satisfaction. Hold up stockings, new knickers, tight skirt. That should cover it. Sam was in town. She gave her hair an extra brush.

When she arrived at her office, she was unusually unpleasant to her receptionist before entering her office and checking that the key was in the lock. She checked her hair again and settled down to run through her duties for the day. Eleven am was the only appointment that mattered.

Sam arrived at the office looking particularly irritated. He smiled at the receptionist and walked straight in. Annette was at her desk.

"Hi Sam," she pouted and rose from her seat to greet him, "Do sit down." She licked her lips.

"Hello. I hear you've lost me $43,000. Then there is that tent at the festival. I am not happy."

"Oh, I'm sorry, that woman seemed crazy. Rambling on about all this academic bullshit. What would she want you for?" Kira, irate as usual, had made a video in fury at not being able to wave her artwork goodbye for no apparent reason.

"I said I'm not happy." Sam cut across her sneering. "I think you had better fetch two towels and a glass of ice cubes, oh, and a cushion, and maybe some tape." He did his best to look furious. "And for the record, I don't know what she wants either, she keeps making these random films yelling at me for no reason. She can't be a very good researcher if she doesn't know about my rap sheet. Anyway, she's a nobody. Who cares? Go and get what I asked for."

Annette rose and slithered out of the office to fetch the items. With great satisfaction she stood in front of his chair and laid them out on the desk, enjoying the audible effects on Sam's breathing of the skirt and slightly overtight underwear. She then followed her usual routine and locked the door.

"Give me the tape and then show me your hands." He proceeded to tape her wrists together in front of her, then briskly removed her skirt and dropped her knickers to her knees. "Turn around and bend over."

After examining her fabulous rear end, he gave her a resounding spanking, audible in the office outside, where the typists giggled and whispered to each other "At least she'll be in a good mood today." When it had reached the pleasing rosy pink he favoured and she had stopped flinching he figured that was probably satisfactory. He was getting a little bit bored with this, but she seemed to like it. He picked up the glass of ice and inserted two cubes of each into each orifice before pulling her panties back up and cutting the tape from her hands. She looked stricken. Over already?

"Put your skirt on and put the towel over the cushion on your chair before you sit down." This was new, thought Annette. She didn't protest, however, which she regretted later that day.

They talked business for a while, until Sam figured from her ability to sit still that the ice had melted. "You can get up now, and turn around."

Annette dutifully showed him the large wet patch on the back of her skirt. "Either you find me very, very exciting, or you've peed your pants. Unbutton your blouse and show me your breasts." Annette had realised by now she was not going to be able to stand up in the office today and would be the last to leave, but this was what floated her boat. Sam tried to look as bored and irritated as he could and tugged nastily at each nipple before getting up and moving towards the door. "Thanks, I'll see you in six months." He didn't bother waiting for her to cover herself up before he unlocked the door and left the office, door as wide as Annette's shocked eyes.

"Job done." He flashed an angelic smile at the blushing typists as he left for his next appointment. He was more bothered about the tent than the $43k artwork. Kira was a nobody anyway, it didn't matter about upsetting a nobody, and 'can't lose what you never had' was his personal mantra as far as the valuation of the artwork was concerned. Nicely primed for his next appointment with Sharifa the tantric goddess, he bounced down the stairs and out into the street.

Zeb's helicopter landed at the back of the Swartz ranch, too far away from the house but within sight of the lodges. He used his mobile to dial Malcolm and got the pilot to carry his bags to his new home for the month. Looking over at the house, he saw the preparations for the Diabetes Festival and frowned. "Is there some sort of event going on?"

"It's not until next week but yes, a diabetes meeting." Malcolm was a little nervous. Zeb was a big name, big spending client, for the next month anyway.

"Interesting, mind if I sit in?"

Phew, thought Malcolm. "No, no, we'd be honoured, Mr Toledo."

"Great. Call me Zeb."

He looked around his lodge house. No cooker? No TV? No computer? What on earth was he going to do for the next month? This would drive him crazy. There weren't even any books worth reading on the small bookshelf. All divine hippy nonsense.

He had brought a couple of zingy bestsellers, but they wouldn't keep him going long at his usual speed reading rate. "Uh, Malcolm, what is it that I am expected to actually do for the next month?"

"Relax?" offered Malcolm, with a slight sense of amusement. "You can help in the garden, walk, meditate, and we do offer classes here, but no stress. If you want to hand your phone in, we're happy to take it."

"Whoah this is hardass relaxation, Malcolm, I'm not sure I'm cut out for this."

"I'm sure you'll be fine." Malcolm laughed at this admission of potential failure from the great Zeb.

Peter was now fully back on his feet and bike. Lovely was very happy. He was losing the weight he had gained rather slowly, but he could not enjoy the eleven to twelve hour cycling days he had been used to before the accident. So it was that a still rather beefy Peter addressed the fans to explain what had happened and announce his new book.

It initially went down like a lead balloon. Peter hadn't considered that he was now going to appeal to completely different people. Instead of 'angry young vegans with nothing better to do than soil sports clothes', he was now in the 'hopeless yet determined people who had actually had a life' category. Whilst he got many rousing cheers from his old fans, the numbers gradually dwindled on his videos. Lovely would have to take the lead with the old crowd whilst he searched for the new ones. Peter put Lovely's coaching rates up and his own down and started yet another youtube channel for his inspirational recovery videos. This met with some small success, but so many people had known Peter from his previous incarnation, running down every other health spokesperson with his insistence on mammoth quantities of fruit and exercise, that he ran into a lot of opposition.

Lovely was still not happy with her increased waistline, and so the new videos were somewhat more sedate. She was happy to be considered more valuable, by Peter and fans alike, but she still wasn't all that happy with the bikini videos. She pondered the difficulty of losing three inches once you had them, and looked around for a solution. Peter certainly wasn't the devil-may-care driven cyclist he used to be. She decided that the answer was to enter a race herself. It wasn't as if they were going to have children, she reasoned, Peter had very strong views about population control, she might as well devote herself to sport.

Kira had now released her novel, too. 'The Raw Scandal' was not an instant success, but judicious reinvestment in marketing ensured that at least in terms of numbers, it was sufficiently successful to attract a large publishing house for her next release. Kira was not rich, but she was at least now defined as something, even if it was a scandalmongering author.

She was in London, at a publishing event in a horribly large function room, in her best brown velvet dress, on the phone to Aldous.

"I really hate this. I wish you had come. All these positively hideous and very annoying authors keep expecting me to want to have brief incompetent sex with them. I don't think they get out much. I wouldn't mind but they all seem to want to pretend they are terribly erudite and witty. I wish I hadn't put quite as much sex in the book now."

"Ha ha, the sooner you are in demand the better. Have you found a publisher for the academic book yet?" Aldous knew from experience that 'All these authors' probably consisted of two being a bit over friendly.

"Are you kidding? All these people care about is numbers. I'll need to punt a few more scandals before I can get someone to take on an academic book. This is frankly embarrassing."

"Hurry up and get rich and famous."

"I'll do my very best. Oh cool, David Mitchell is here. He really is erudite and witty, and he won't want any sex. Speak to you in a bit, I'll go and see if I can chat him up."

A ping on her phone told her something had sold from her embroidery store online. She stitched whilst she wrote. It didn't bring in much, but she felt more in balance working that way. She was working on an ebook about embroidery, not really for the money so much as the sheep farmers.

By the end of the evening, Kira had managed to secure herself a guest spot on a popular comedy panel show by amusing a young up and coming type from a fairly minor TV channel. The travelling up and down from Scotland wasn't really her idea of fun, but she supposed, the publicity would be OK.

Gary had arrived. Really arrived. He was on the Swartz ranch with some of his favourite Raw food authors. Sam was due to arrive in a day or two, fresh in from a hot-tubbing speaking tour of Canada. Zinca was floating around looking diaphanous and lovely, Joe was collapsed in a hammock in the garden of the newly refurbished outbuilding they had been allocated for the week. A sea of tents stretched into the distance on Malcolm's land. There was, somewhat incongruously, a smell of cooking coming from some of the newbies' tents. Johan patted Gary on the back.

"So I hear you are quite the tantra connoisseur these days."

"Yeah, I don't think Malcolm wants me to discuss that though. I probably have to talk about weight loss and discovering your spirituality again."

"I don't know, Malcolm loves his yoga. I'm not sure what I'm doing here, to be honest."

"I think we're supposed to put on classes and stuff as well as the speeches. Encourage them to take an interest, basically. We should probably draw up a rota or something."

"I guess he will come and talk to us later."

"I guess."

Malcolm appeared, quite late and flustered from the number of questions he had been asked by the demanding diabetics. Quite a few long term raw-food-recovered diabetics had come just to show support for the speakers, so there had been a lot of socialising to do in addition to making sure they all had what they needed. It was going to be a long week.

"OK we've set you up a marquee if you want to organise anything in there, and there is a stage built for the main event with loudspeakers. Have you got everything you need until it kicks off tomorrow?" They did.

"Right if you can decide amongst yourselves what you want to do in the marquee or maybe set up stalls or something. Really whatever you want to contribute is fine. We will be doing our usual classes during the day and they have a list of those and they can check availability in the marquee as and when you want to do anything. Sam, as you probably know will be flying in from Canada in a couple of days too. We have a big rally planned for Friday's finale, and you will all want to do something for that. It's the afternoon, so you need to figure out what order you want to go in. I'll call back in this evening after the gratitude meal."

"OK"

Dwayne pulled up at the lush Oceanside property he called home and pulled two of the four bags from the trunk of the car. He was tired and the month long parking at the airport had cost a fortune.

Grumpily he went inside, dumped the bags and grabbed the enormous pile of mail from the cage at the side of the door. Throwing the 'duds' to one side, he found what he was looking for.

He was now the proud owner of another very large health company. Siren Shout foods was his. No word from Joe, he really wanted that one, too. He wondered if he should call? No, too keen. It was a good offer, he couldn't be seen to want it too badly.

Anastasia and Dmitri were now living in the first building of their mystic village. Destined to be the main public area, it was a bit large for daily living, but they had everything they needed. They were sleeping on the backstage in the theatre, curtained off from draughts. Anastasia couldn't help feeling a little lonely away from the town, but she was proud of what they had managed so far, and a few of her customers had built small huts in the surrounding fields to spend weekends with them, which could only be a good sign. They were renting them small plots to garden and put temporary shelters up. She and her sister would prepare enormous lunches for them in the future cafe, which brought in enough cash to get by, whilst they sought investors and help for the next building on the plans, their hostel.

Both money and the schedule were tight, but they were confident they could persuade enough people, both online and off, to provide the cash they needed, and they were, for the most part, happy with progress so far. Anastasia had had another two trips abroad, and several 'gifts' from her many male admirers had helped keep them positive about the future despite a fairly low bank balance. If Anastasia had any doubts, she didn't let Dmitri know about it.

Somewhere in Ottawa, Sam was sharing another hot tub with some friends after another successful day on his speaking tour. He had wowed these fans with a heroic speech about organic Canadian farming and keeping your dreams alive. He was feeling a little jaded. He looked around the large tub, and realised he had already had sex with five out of the six other occupants on previous visits. He enjoyed his evening without bothering to close on any deals that evening, and went to look at the internet.

The usual abuse from Peter's fans, the usual hero worship from his own fans, his number one fan and self-proclaimed 'Redwoodess', Claire, who Kira had always thought was Sam himself because she was so unspeakably dull, was as usual inexorably boring the pants off the devotees on his facebook page: 'Sam does not like soy. Sam likes to take his tea hot, black and without sugar.'

There was nothing for him to do at all. He made up some victorious sounding sentences for his status updates, and decided to go to bed with some chocolate. Then he saw an advert for 'The Raw Scandal' and decided to buy it. In only an hour, he was more incensed than he had ever remembered being in his life. Enraged, he checked the sales figures. Ignoring the time, he called his brother, Domenic, the lawyer, to discuss action.

"This bitch says I have satyriasis! This book is full of lurid scenes of me and random women. She says I need black willow and a camphor locket."

"Do we really have to discuss this now? It's late. What is satyriasis?" Domenic yawned.

"Some sort of old fashioned European term for sex addiction. I looked it up."

"I think you should maybe just take that one on the chin, Sam. No such thing as bad publicity. Has she at any point suggested that you're bad at your job or that your products are bad?"

"No."

"Well it doesn't affect your income then, unless you include upwards. Do you really want to be suing some fat, lonely and according to you, repulsively ugly woman for writing a slightly racy novel that isn't even definitely about you? She probably doesn't have anything for you to sue her for anyway. Does she actually have any money Sam? I think I should also point out to you as your lawyer that she did try to talk to you for months before she did it." Domenic had watched a few of Kira's videos, and felt quite sorry for her trying to deal with his brother. He knew from experience how difficult that could be.

"I want you to hurt her. I don't care how. A letter or something. Why should I talk to her? She's a nobody."

"If she's a nobody there's nothing to sue her for. Give it up Sam. Have you actually finished the book yet?"

"No."

"Let me know how it ends. I'm going back to sleep. Try not to get too uptight, now, won't you?" Domenic had always been led to believe that his brother's diet, meditation and general regime was supposed to render him laid back. He wondered when that was going to happen. "What's the name of the book again? I must get a copy for mom." He smiled at his brothers puffing at the other end of the phone.

Thanks to Peter's extensive experience and relentless coaching, Lovely had won her first endurance race. She was happy. Peter was also happy, and managed to quell the inevitable feelings of slight jealousy with feelings of intense pride. To make things even better, she almost had her waist back.

Peter's inspirational channel was starting to do a little better thanks to some heartfelt ranting, and his book started to sell on his new website. He had learned to drive, and was had started speaking tours in hospitals. He was offered a place coaching for the Paralympics. They had now financially recovered from the accident as a result and moved nearer the city, to a bigger house with a pool.

"It almost makes me feel a bit religious, Lovely. I think we're going to be OK." Peter was preparing to take Lovely to see a new cycling shop.

Lovely smiled. No more vomiting required either. She was getting leaner and leaner thanks to her training programme, and the fans seemed to enjoy the increased bikini video output without Peter. She put on a dress, for a change, and they went shopping.

Sam arrived at Malcolm's in a small plane he had chartered. He walked the other five miles across the scrub land to the main house. He had finished Kira's book. He wasn't quite so angry now, but he was going to see if he could persuade the other 'characters' to sue. He tried to figure out why she had done it, and couldn't understand it at all. Some people were obsessed with fame, he guessed. He did not, of course, consider that his being polite for five minutes could have averted the entire situation.

Directed into the building housing the rest of the speakers, who were taking a break from mingling amongst the campers, he walked in, spreading his arms in characteristic star mode.

"I'm here!" The others looked up, drowsy from the heat. "Good to see you, Sam."

Sam thought he would wake them up a bit "Have you seen this?" He waved his Kindle.

"Oh that, yeah." Joe yawned "I don't get to do anything very exciting really, do I? You seem to have all the fun in it. I've never played tennis though, I don't know where she got that from."

"What is it?" Johan squinted at the cover page. "Wow that's one big piece of embroidery."

"Oh yeah, she made that for me apparently. I didn't let her have an office address so she could actually send it. She's crazy." Sam warmed to his topic. "I just have that effect on some people."

"Yeah you drive me crazy too, Sam." Zinca did not smile as she passed through the room. "Oh yes, I read this. You think it's about you?"

"Of course it's about me. Who else would it be about?" Sam was confused. How could anyone fail to recognise him?

"The main character doesn't really look much like you. The only similarity really is that he wears a poncho." Zinca remained unsmiling as she teased Sam. She was still a bit annoyed with him about his beauty book. "Or are you telling us that you're fat?" She needled him further.

"Can I read it Sam?" Johan asked. "Am I in it?"

"Oh yes, and she has some very interesting ideas about land ownership. I think you'll be quite annoyed." Sam honed in on a possible ally. "And you Gary, you are some sort of tantric guru in this." He exaggerated for effect. He revelled in the idea of them reading about his alleged virility as they did so.

"Ok I'll give it a read and pass it on to Gary tonight. Is that OK Gary?"

"Sure." Gary was quite pleased at the idea that he was considered a Tantric guru.

"I'm not sure what you're so excited about Sam. New media directions are a good thing." Joe had already figured out why Kira had done it. "I think it's quite smart actually. No moralising, no hippy stuff, just lots of action and a few recommendations sneaked in."

"It's not smart if it makes me out to be a crazy swinger." Sam was getting quite annoyed now.

"You've been cultivating that idea for years Sam, relax, it's no biggie. If we're lucky we'll get a few hundred more hits out of it, for a while anyway." Joe went back to his reading. "You should thank her." Joe had never understood why Kira was in the slightest bit interested in Sam anyway. Much as he liked him, Sam always seemed too into himself to even notice someone actually caring about him. "You might get more excitement out of Peter, amputating his arms and legs was a bit harsh, I thought. She was a bit mean to Lovely, too, although it worked out in the end." Joe started to laugh. "Look on it as slightly twisted fan fiction. It would make a good film."

Sam was stunned. No-one thought it was a big deal?

Kira released her second book, a small ebook on scruff embroidery, as she called it, which she didn't imagine would sell terribly well, but might help to promote her online embroidery store. She was running through her savings, however, and knew she had to put out another four novels before she would be safe to move on with the business idea. She wasn't keen on debt, it was too worrying, so she delayed and delayed moving on with it. She really wanted to finish the Cultural Economic hypothesis, but the idea of it seemed quite far away now.

Sam seemed determined to be a super salesman for the rest of his life, and since he was doing rather well at it, she thought she might as well leave him to it. He would probably sue her anyway, she thought, just to insult her even more. What a shame, she had wanted such great things for him, but never mind. 'Pearls before swine,' as Harry used to say. Kira had been trying to do things for people who didn't understand it for years, so it was no surprise that this attempt had failed too. It was a shame, she couldn't think of a more suitable model for her hypothesis, or a more deserving candidate for her full attention. She had already run through all the raw food leader options, and he had seemed the least concerned with niche elements. Part of being a good businessman rather than the cleverness she sought, she concluded sadly. Too flaky. That was rich, coming from her, she giggled to herself.

Kira was finding the public appearances easier than she anticipated. Her reclusive nature had never been due to shyness, more a sense of disgust and inability to handle too much input. She had lost a bit of weight, because of the endless photographs, but still wasn't really interested in her looks. Lots of male fans wrote to her about 'Raw Scandal.' It really wasn't all that scandalous. She presumed it was because of the group sex scenes. Given that she didn't particularly like crowds, she didn't imagine she would particularly enjoy that, so she took these emails with a hefty pinch of salt.

Her third book 'The Family,' was a story about her own forthcoming murder. She typed and stitched on.

Anastasia now had almost fully occupied steel and glass hostel accommodation for her guests, and increased her output online. She was surprised at the number of worldwide male fans that came to stay, to see her in person and relax for a while in the strange little township that had sprung up alongside her utopia. Dmitri and her were planning houses, and had managed to secure not only permissions, but water and power and a name for their village. 'Valeria' was looking as if it was going to be successful, but their income was still very slow. It was hard for her to contemplate charging any more for her mystic services, so she sought more human doll opportunities to help fund the project. The fans, both mystic and more corporeal, were very generous, both with time and donation.

She wondered how to speed things up.

"You need to get a move on, Dwayne. We need fifteen percent. I know it's a lot to ask." Uncle Richard tapped his wineglass.

"The only way I can do that is by either bullying people into selling, or persuading them to float, and I can't do that personally. I've bought all the shares that came my way this month just to get to twelve. The health food business doesn't quite work the way we're used to."

"OK so we need to put the idea into their heads. Contact your cousin Brian, give him your email list, let him handle it."

The day of the finale at Malcolm's was here. Robin and Barry had arrived, and were studiously avoiding each other as the line-up of speakers was finalised and the crowd gathered. They had half an hour each. Malcolm would talk about spirituality and the medical benefits of his green raw sprouted diet, Joe about avoiding narcotics, meditation and health products, Gary about his inspirational weight loss and the benefits of yoga, Zinca about raw food and beauty, Johan on wild foods, Robin on longevity with a stunning collection of examples, Barry about the history of the Stoic Centre and finally, as Sam as demanded, a full hour of Sam talking about organics, diabetes and superfood solutions. A long day for the audience, they drifted in and out and bought products from the marquee throughout the day.

Zeb stood at the back, waiting for Sam to come on. Malcolm stopped by after his spot to see how he was.

"Better, thanks, this is really interesting. What sort of figures are we looking at?"

"For the week? We've brought in about two hundred thousand, a bit extra on the products, but that was a bonus for the speakers. It's been a lot of work and time, though. I think we'll make it yearly."

"It's not bad, how much are the speakers getting out of that?"

"Well, I'm on favour rates for this one, I couldn't say what the normal rate would be." Malcolm was not going to be drawn on that one. He knew Sam would be upset if he told Zeb.

"Would you mind if I spoke after Sam?"

"I'd be honoured, Zeb."

"Can I plug my ipod into those speakers?"

"Yes they can do that."

"Don't tell him, will you?"

"I wouldn't dream of it."

As the afternoon went on, Malcolm was kept busy providing for the crowd, and thought no more of it until Sam took the stage. Sam wouldn't mind, would he? Zeb and him were old friends.

Everyone knew that.

Sam talked for his hour, from organic farming, to superfood research, to the benefits of various supplements, all available from his store in the marquee. The audience were, of course, thrilled. As he drew his show to the end, he gently filled his audience full of hope and optimism and felt he had done his usual superior job. Until he caught sight of Zeb behind him. He froze.

"Great job, Sam." Zeb plugged in his Ipod. A banging tune got the audience jumping up and down. After the usual overlong bouncing, Sam announced the great Zeb Toledo with rocks in his heart.

After twenty minutes Zeb had convinced the crowd, with no health knowledge whatsoever, that they could conquer anything. They were wild with excitement about their futures. He felt rather smug as he closed the afternoon. Sam was waiting in the wings.

"What are you doing here?" He was visibly unhappy, for once.

"Having a rest, actually. Nice to see you, again." Zeb walked back to his lodge smirking. Sam couldn't touch him. Ever.

"I wonder why Sam left so quickly? He sold quite a lot today, and he forgot his Kindle." Gary put down the machine. "Is anyone going to see him to give it back to him?"

"I doubt he will care. No new chickies here, that's probably why." Johan was preparing to leave. "Malcolm will mail it to him. Give it to him. What did you think of the book then?"

"Not a whole lot of scandal, good title though. Is he really that prolific with the girlies?"

"I doubt it." Johan laughed. "But it was quite funny to see his outraged expression."

"Yes he doesn't change his face much, does he?"

"If it ain't broke don't fix it, he's made a fortune out of that face. Wanna come back to the farm with me? I'm working on some wild food products. I'd really appreciate it if you would try them."

"Sure, I'm not busy until next week."

Six months later, Kira was now on her fifth novel. She had a limited but reasonably steady income and started getting quotes for the web development. She was finding it hard to stop writing now. Even the embroidery was falling behind, as was the housework. The cats were liking knowing where she was though, tapping away on the keyboard in bed day in, day out. She got a few invites to appear in various places talking about the books, but she wasn't inclined to accept many of them. A face for radio, she thought.

She wondered what Sam had thought of the book. She didn't suppose she would ever get an answer to that either, unless he sued her. What an incredibly rude man. The few exchanges they had, he had seemed quite nice, if a bit shy for a supposedly legendary womaniser. Overexcitable, she supposed. She wondered if she had made enough money yet to merit a conversation with him. It probably wouldn't make any difference, it was hardly obvious what one's income was on a facebook page.

A few very expensive handbags sold, one artwork. She was reasonably pleased about that, she supposed, but the one she had made for Sam still lurked in her studio, taunting her. She really didn't like going down there anymore. She really didn't like going anywhere. She had so utterly convinced herself that she was repulsive that she hadn't wanted to go out in two years. This was not all because of Sam, Aldous had announced that she was fat after she had lost the initial 200lb so she had become convinced she would never look good enough for the rest of the world and had given up shooting and fencing. That was OK, she supposed, she didn't see herself much and who else was looking? She could just about manage the shopping and the medical appointments for her mother but that was it. She had tried a couple of times to go back to swim, but hadn't enjoyed it at all. Kira was aware that this was ridiculous, but it didn't seem to make any difference. She just thought she had better get on with making as much money as it took to get people to treat her like a human being, however much that was.

Kira frequently wished that she had never bothered with raw food. She would have been dead by now instead of slowly degenerating, trapped in her beloved home with nothing ahead of her but being forced out of it by her siblings, probably on the day her mother died going by their track record. Longevity, like Cultural Economic theory, doesn't mean anything to someone with no future. She again pondered why something so small could hurt her so much. Far worse things had happened to her than being blocked on facebook. It had been more than two years now, how long was it going to take to get back to the first book? She supposed there was no real reason to write it now anyway. Did it really matter if humankind consumed itself and the planet to death? Probably not, even if they did listen to her, which they probably wouldn't. She wondered gloomily if Oppenheimer, who used to refer to himself as 'the loneliest man in the world' had ever dumped a project for similar reasons, and decided that he probably had. How many other people out there, that no one had ever heard of, were dumping projects for stupid day to day reasons? It didn't bear thinking about.

Joe arrived home and was delighted to see that Hilary had planted up the winter garden. She was sitting in the garden near the paddock when he found her, with the baby cooing softly in her lap.

"Nice day at the office, toodlepips?" she smiled.

"Yeah it was OK, something like really weird happened with Sam and Zeb Toledo."

"Zeb Toledo? He was there?"

"Yeah, I always thought they were friends. I don't know what he was doing here, but he did some sort of thrillkill speech at the end and Sam bolted."

"Childhood rivalry?"

"Dunno. Have you heard from Dwayne White?"

"No but I imagine we will. Any other news? Did we sell much?"

"Yeah it was OK, I'm sure the videos will do OK too. Oh yeah and Sam got hysterical over that insane woman's book. That was quite funny."

"Well, we didn't see that coming at all, did we?" Hilary laughed. "Any news of a new book from him?"

"You know Sam, he's probably too distracted doing something random with someone 'incredibly amazing' that he's picked up on the side of the road. Best pray that it's a dude or nothing will get done."

Anastasia still didn't have a home of her own. She was getting fed up. They had sold the first three houses so quickly that they were now working on their second three. She hoped one of them would be hers, at least until they could build something suitably pink, perfect and doll-like. Cash flow had improved to the point that she could afford to get annoyed about sleeping backstage in the theatre. It wasn't all that pleasant living on a giant building site, but they were surviving and that was all that mattered for the moment.

A letter arrived, translated into Ukrainian by a not-so-professional American translator. "Our client, a great fan of yours, wishes to spend the night in your presence and is willing to pay whatever you ask for this to take place." What on earth did that mean? Wishes to spend the night in your presence? Whoever it was was welcome to watch her and Dmitri sleep if they wanted. She decided to put an exorbitant price on it in the hope that this oddball went away.

To her surprise, Mr White accepted her long list of terms the following month.

Don and Michael had got the crazy idea from somewhere that they wanted to float Super Superfood Supermarket on the stock exchange. Sam was getting frustrated.

"No, that's what happened with Ragha. If you put shares up for sale, the Whites will buy them and then we have the same problem all over again. We have no need at all to float it. I just don't know where you are getting the idea from." He shook his head, where had this come from?

"But if we release all this capital, we all retain twenty percent, we can do all sorts of stuff. You can start satellite events with people from your raw food education courses, turn you into another Zeb Toledo. It's your dream, and we all get cash from it too."

"I don't care about that. I care about keeping our independence. You have no idea what it's like being voted off your own board. If you insist on doing this I'll sell my shares and split."

Michael and Don looked at each other. They knew perfectly well what this would mean. Sam was front man, and they both knew it. Michael didn't particularly like big public appearances and Don was busy at home most of the time.

"We need to give it some thought at least Sam." Don tried, warily.

"No we don't. We are never ever going to float this company, I don't care about the money."

"Look Sam, I've watched you for years working and working to stay in the same place. All I'm saying is that if we do this, you can finally get to where you want to be. More courses, retreats, marketing, bigger events. Name syndication."

"Maybe it's not all about the money, Don. Maybe it's about the freedom and being in control." Sam remained defiant. "I've been telling the people that for years. Maybe it's true."

"Maybe it's just about chicks." Michael laughed. He had read 'Raw Scandal' too.

Sam puffed angrily "Don't mention the war." He snickered despite himself. "I'll get my own back, you see if I don't. And for the record, I don't want to be another Zeb Toledo, either. We'll get there in the end, but we aren't letting go of this company."

"It isn't much good to you if you're dead, Sam." Don was genuinely quite worried about Sam's seemingly unlimited capacity for flogging himself to death with work, whether it was useful work or not didn't seem to worry him.

"If I'm dead I don't imagine it will bother me much, do you? I haven't worked this hard for this long to end up getting sucker punched out of my own business more than once. No, no floating the company, no mergers, no sleeping partners, no nothing. I may be an idiot, but I'm nobody else's idiot but my own." Sam grinned. "Ooh, I have a date. I have to go."

"No shit." Michael and Don laughed their heads off.

"Shut up." Sam got up and grabbed his jacket. "She's amazing."

"Aren't they all?" Don wondered what all these women thought about Sam. Maybe they were all just passing the time until death. "Have the best date ever!"

Johan finally released his range of dried, preserved and freeze dried wild food products. A lot of the fans, of course, were angry and announced that they felt he was betraying them. They had bought ebooks and courses on how to find free food, and couldn't understand why he wasn't now releasing that information for nothing. Johan sighed. He gave away plenty of information, intended as loss-leading to encourage new people to buy his books. Now he had gone to all this trouble to make the produce available to people who could not get to national parks or private wild areas like his own to gather their own, and still people complained. How else was he supposed to make his living, never mind preserve the farm?

His project to try cultivating wild food had met with limited success, but he was encouraged to try more replanting in the hope of actually harvesting a crop of some sort. The packaging and cost of FDA approval on his wild food range had used up almost all of his money, and he was taking small film contracts to live on whilst he tried to make his project work. He figured if he could get the wild food range to work before his father died, he would not need to be working what would otherwise be two hunting estates. He didn't feel right about that, although the fans did not know about his father's deal with Harvey, if they were ever to find out he thought they would complain. They certainly did about everything else, including the high quality of his videos, perversely enough.

His mother had introduced him to a young farmer's daughter, Peggy, who taught survival courses in the nearby national park, and he enjoyed a few afternoons harvesting during long walks with her. Naturally she was fascinated by his obsession with wild food. He wasn't that attracted to her, if he was honest, but he thought, with the practicality of most men, that he could easily be happy with her. So, he was reasonably content. All he had to do now was make the wild food products work, he thought, and keep on with the work he had devoted himself to.

Peter was over the moon when he got the email from the TV company. They would have to move house again. He had got a job commentating on sporting events. Together with his coaching duties, motivational tours and their videos, they were now very comfortably off. He looked back at some of his videos from a decade before. Shouting his head off about now comparatively impoverished authors. He felt a bit bad about that. Maybe he should take them down?

He decided, at length, that since he would have to be selective about that and he didn't actually regret them, to leave them up for now. He was aware that now that he had some money, he was at increased risk of litigation, but since it had been so long ago now, most of the authors had, superficially at least, forgotten about it and since he was on another continent, they would be unaware that he was now considerably better off than they were.

Serves them right for not eating fruit, he thought.

Lovely was still doing her bikini vegan promotional videos, but now had severe sun damage to her eyes from her daily training and was getting a bit leery of being the oldest babe in town. She started recruiting young female cyclists to appear in her videos. There was only so much you could say about eating a diet of fruit, she found, so she had to research other vegan literature to make her videos. Fortunately no one ever seemed to think of verbal plagiarism.

Kira was in Los Angeles, signing copies of her various books in some giant bookstore she had lost track of the name of. She had been touring for six weeks. She was very bored, but Aldous had reappeared when he had been fired from his job in a ceramic factory and she had employed him as a PA for the companionship when travelling. She was doing quite well now, but wasn't particularly looking forward to either the irate raw foodists, fans of famous chefs, or lovers of authority that would inevitably drift in to give her a piece of their minds. Didn't they have anything else to do? She had found this quite upsetting at first, but, quickly realising that the drama attracted more people to the book signing queue, hence her books, decided to roll with the punches.

Aldous fluttered around trying to look busy. She tried asking him to sit down, but he was determined to look as if he was earning his free trip to the USA. No-one was more surprised than Kira when Sam, looking for his date, wandered in. She spotted him in the doorway.

"If he's here for me then get rid of him. He probably isn't, but keep your eye on him."

"Why?"

"I can't handle it. Just get rid of him."

Sam spotted 'Raw Scandal' on the book pile next to the queue. The bitch is here! I think I'll surprise her, he thought mischievously and joined the line of oddly mismatched people.

Aldous did as he was asked and spoke to Sam. "You aren't really here to see Kira, are you?"

"No, I was just passing, but I'll say hello whilst I'm here." Sam looked bright and friendly. Aldous felt bad, but he knew from previous experience if he let it happen she would hit the roof, swiftly followed by verbally chopping him into tiny pieces and feeding him to the seagulls.

"She wants you to leave. I'm sorry." Aldous had a strong sense of deja-vu.

"What?" Sam did not understand this at all. Surely everything she had done was to meet him?

"She says she doesn't want to see you."

Given that Kira had gone to great lengths in the previous years to repeat that she didn't want to see him after he had blocked her from facebook, and presumably from attending his events, this should have made sense to Sam, but it didn't.

"What's wrong?" Sam presumably imagined that Kira tried to give away years of her time and work to random strangers every day.

"I don't know, but if I let you anywhere near her, she'll get super-super-angry with both you and me. Would you mind just leaving it?"

"Right, sure." Sam left the bookstore, stunned. She had really meant it. Why would she go to all that trouble and then refuse to see him? What was it with this chick? He wasn't used to being repelled from anything. A little outraged, he tottered down the street and found his date in the smaller, funkier bookstore. She was, of course, 'like totally amazing.'

"Because if I see him, he'll know how much pain he's caused. It's pointless. I'll just have to wait until it goes away." Kira was tearful again. "I'm sorry you had to do that, but you know what it's like. Besides which, he would probably say something facile and cheerful, and then I would want to throttle him."

"Might it be better to throttle him? I could help?" Aldous did his best to stop Kira's weeping. She laughed "Yes, it probably would. Poor Sam, it's not his fault. I can't even blame him for anything. This sucks. You have to remember though, it's all just a mortal delusion so it doesn't really matter." Why couldn't he have just either spoken to her or taken the stupid gift? She could have got on with the serious book and the website instead of all this messing about.

It was probably too late now anyway. Now she was a novelist. How tiresome. She decided to launch her online business as soon as she could, to avoid the indignity of becoming a hideous–brief-incompetent-sex-demanding author.

Malcolm was inspired when he read 'Raw Scandal.' He had started work on his own book under a pseudonym. The illustrated story of 'the fisherman who found the goddess' was a children's book about ecology, natural medicine and the dangers of too many packaged foods. He worked on it between classes and consultations as his retreats continued. Zeb had given him a ringing endorsement, and his lodge prices had to be raised to cope with the super-rich Americans looking for a complete rest from their frantic, selfish, demanding lifestyles.

Even Herman had called him, to offer congratulations and an assurance that he would be sending some of his own recovering star patients, who naturally wanted to hide whilst they recovered from surgery to maintain their 'miracle' good looks. Malcolm suspected from the conversation with Herman that things with Celia were not going well. He sniggered a little, but Celia hadn't been a bad wife, just the sort of wife one wants when one is on the way up rather than trying to kick back a little, as Herman must be. She had put Herman on a strict diet, which he was not enjoying one little bit.

Malcolm considered inviting him to stay, and quickly rejected it when he remembered Herman's temper. No, leave them to it, we all get what we deserve in life, he thought.

Joe calculated what he and Hilary were worth to the company as 'assets'. He figured it had to be between a million and a million and a half a year. They had made, and kept, the company successful through tours, videos, research and general management, not to mention the book tie-ins over the years. He couldn't afford to sell it to Dwayne even if he wanted to, it was worth too much. Not that he wanted to sell it, but the idea of accepting the huge new offer, wriggling out and starting over was quite appealing. Unfortunately Dwayne had learned his lesson from Ragha and was trying to lock them into the company and buy it at the same time.

Joe was not amused by this idea, but the offer was ludicrous. Sam had done pretty well out of the coup at Ragha, but that was Sam and they had stupidly kicked him off the board. This offer made it very clear they weren't going to be that stupid again. Hilary wouldn't like it, but they would be made for life.

They were made for life anyway, though, and they didn't really need to worry about it. Did they?

Dwayne arrived at the village, tired from the long journey but looking forward to his luxury stay at Anastasia's mystic retreat. Uncle Richard had apparently arranged something special for him to celebrate their now twenty percent stake in the American health food market. This was slightly more than they needed, and it was all nicely in profit waiting for the next phase of the plan.

He unpacked whilst scoping his surroundings. Nice, architectural steel and glass everywhere, the furniture was a little cheapskate by his usual standards, but he figured he wasn't going to need to be too flashy here. He didn't speak Ukrainian, of course, but he had a cute little translator with him from back home to make sure he got by and 'relieve any frustrations' he might have during his visit. Nice one, Uncle Richard, he thought, looking at the neat, black-haired thirty- something. He, in turn, had no idea that 'relieving any frustrations' meant tolerating the advances of a slightly chubby, dishevelled and not-particularly-stressed American. He just imagined that he was being paid this much to be yelled at, which mercifully hadn't happened yet. So far, everything had remained nicely polite.

As evening fell on the second day, the public building lit up and they could detect movement in the glass-fronted café. Dwayne suggested that they go and see if anything was happening.

As they entered the double-height smoked glass doors people of all ages in, by Dwayne's way of thinking, very ordinary clothing, smiled, nodded in their direction and carried on chatting. It all seemed very serious and intense by American standards, but these people took their mysticism seriously. Anastasia was considered something of a divine presence at these meetings, so said the translator, picking up on the conversations around them and whispering to Dwayne.

Dmitri spotted the stranger and went over to try conversation via the translator.

"You will be coming to the main house tonight. You will see Anastasia, and I will do as you requested. First you will be attending the event."

"OK." Dwayne licked his lips when he saw Dmitri's burly arms. There would be no translator needed at the house, he hoped. Just enough to get him in the door.

When morning came, Dwayne emerged, black and blue and deeply satisfied. He had spent the night looking at Anastasia nude and posed with exquisitely placed lighting whilst being resoundingly beaten by Dmitri. He was a happy man.

Unfortunately, whilst he had been away, his impatient Uncle Richard had been busy on his behalf.

Sam was a little bit irritated by the bookshop episode. He hadn't even seen Kira in person, although looking at her videos, she wasn't really worth seeing anyway. Who the hell did she think she was, asking him to leave? What had she wanted from all this, if not to see him? He had read somewhere she was rather wealthy now, although obviously nothing in comparison with his own riches. He ran a quick search on her on the internet. A few mentions, a few photos, nothing more. She looked a lot better in the photos than she had in the videos, but that wasn't saying much, he thought. She still didn't seem all that bothered about the whole 'thin' issue, which was annoying. She had been so much prettier when she was. Shame. It never clicked that she had stopped caring the minute he had upset her. Not for a minute. She was just a nobody, so why would it matter anyway?

Since Sam was blessed with the attention span of a small, small goldfish for anything but work, he turned his attention to the news and forgot all about her. Organic farming seemed to be taking a smattering of hits across the US and Europe, e-coli outbreaks from battery farmed manure being put on the vegetables, contamination from GM chemicals and careless planting.

Then he saw the first of the health food scandals. High oxalate levels appearing in cauliflower, powdered glass in a big name consignment of chromium, 'natural poisons' in a variety of herbal medicines. Nothing that affected his own products, but quite a comprehensive list of things all happening at once. What was going on? He emailed Joe to alert him to the list of recalled products he had found, just in case he had any on his stock list. He emailed his own producers and outlets to make sure they were extra vigilant.

Peter, an internet fiend, had already seen the scandals, and revelled in making videos about it. Both his channel and Lovely's had smug videos about the folly of American health food sales and the wonder of fruit.

It didn't occur to them that no one was actually checking the fruit until the first fruitarians died.

"Do you think many of them will die?" Aldous poured Kira another cup of green tea. It was several months later and the first American deaths from health food and organic products had been reported.

She looked up from the news online. "Probably a good few, however many it takes White Industries to get the point across. Shame about that hypothesis I was writing isn't it?"

Aldous remembered the notes "Yes. Aren't you bothered?"

"Everyone is going to die Aldous. The beauty of Economics is that is merely a figure. You don't really concern yourself beyond that. That's how White Industries think too. Just avoid buying anything from the colonies until the thing plays out. White Industries have the US government cornered, and they have considerably more money."

"You don't think maybe you should get back to writing the hypothesis now?" Aldous was amused at Kira's Victorian reference to the colonies and chuckled a little despite himself.

"Bit late now, the great American chemical food and drug war is well underway. It might have been useful to get the public talking before it happened, rather than when the media are getting everyone hysterical about the dangers of health food and organics. They're extoling the virtues of conventional medicine and the fabulous low prices of chemically enhanced crops and battery farmed animals now. Besides, there's a good few years work in it yet. I'm not a miracle worker. Codex Alimentarius will also be affected, as the rest of the world follows whatever happens in America. So yes, we will probably see an outright ban on herbal medicine and organic produce."

"What's Codex Alimentarius?"

"Oh it's this rather neat way of stopping poor countries competing on the global food and medicine market by setting impossible standards for transporting food and drugs over borders on the grounds of public health. It means they can shut down alternative food sources and drug supplies anytime they want. They've been setting this situation up for years."

"Are we safe?"

"For the moment, not forever. We're better at finding ways around things like that in Europe. White Industries are typically Yank and brash about it, but I'm sure the other integrated pharma/agrichemical companies will catch up, or else some other idiot that wants to line his pockets with cash will have another stupid idea."

"You seem so relaxed about it."

"I cried my river at the time, Aldous. I'm just not that worried about it now. Crying for a couple of years is not my idea of a rip-roaring good time." Kira put on her 'devil-may-care' expression and stared out of the large bay window.

"I just assumed it was about Sam."

"Of course it was. The entire thing was about Sam. I told you, you have to use what's in front of you. I don't like people that much. He does. There's always a reason for seemingly random events like that. I thought he would understand, but he didn't join the dots. Too bad, how sad, he's not as smart as I gave him credit for. I strongly suspect that old Indian chief that said you can't eat money was cursing them." Kira let out a hollow laugh. "Anyway, let's go and play some croquet. Why should I worry about it anymore? I'm going to 'think beautiful thoughts and not worry about the future,' as Sam recommends. Perhaps I should take up beach volleyball or something. Concern myself about stupid things like my stomach muscles or my hair. Hang out at the 'mall' with my cheerleading buddies. Go to pop concerts."

Aldous fervently hoped she would not do that, but knowing Kira, she would at least try it for a while. "How is the new business going?"

"Very well, but not well enough to counteract this. All I can do is make it a tad easier for these people to communicate. It's all going to get a bit nasty."

"You mean to the point of actually assassinating a few people?"

"That's right, the cuddly-wuddly laid-back herbal hippy types will have to rub a few select individuals out. They probably won't figure it out until it's far, far too late, and even then they probably won't do it. Peter and Lovely look as if they could just about manage it, I doubt very much the rest are up to it. Oh there's Don, isn't there, he knows how to use a nice big gun. Nah, I still don't think he's up to it. They're all stuffed." She smiled brightly.

"All because you got blocked on facebook?" Aldous shook his head in wonderment.

"No, but it was predictable and it could easily have been avoided had I not been blocked on facebook, hence too stupidly upset to write the damned book. There is nothing to say the morons would have actually read the hypothesis. I doubt very much they would have. 'Cultural economics, what does it have to do with us, man? Like totally not relevant, brah.' You can imagine, can't you? The most I wanted from it really was a bit of political awareness at the senate so that the Whites didn't get quite so much power. That's what I wanted Sam for, rabble rousing, but never mind, shit happens. Now lots of people are going to die and we are going to read endless stories about marvellous people inventing chemical solutions to anything and everything. You know me, I get very uptight anticipating doom and then when it actually happens I'm fine. Death is probably good for the planet anyway. Most people don't do much apart from make more people and consume. Anyway, let's play, you are very welcome to win today, I'm not worried about a thing. We can check the death count after dinner. Ten quid says it's up."

They wandered onto Kira's newly levelled croquet lawn and played hilariously badly. Aldous was astonished but somehow relieved that Kira had recovered the stone cold, frosty heart he knew and loved.

Zeb looked at the thousands of people in the audience from behind the wings. He had done conventions like this before, of course, but this one was quite special, and surprisingly well paid. He was about to address the Chemical Industries convention in Seattle. A special celebratory convention this year, celebrating the doubling of profits across the industry.

People were buying chemical solutions to an ever increasing range of problems in droves, thanks to the reassuring and, as usual, wildly enthusiastic and not terribly independent media coverage of the current boom in chemical products and over the counter pharmaceutical cures. It had been a bit like the 1950s advertising of cigarettes over the last few months. Daily accounts of the healthy and liberal use of chemicals to make food cheaper, houses cleaner, factories more efficient and products more useful. No-one really noticed, but 'scientific' had become the most used 'buzzword' in their daily news. If it was 'scientific' it was good, if not it was very, very bad. 'Scientific' was good, 'natural' a little dirty and old fashioned. People laughed when they thought of these old 'natural' products. The industry had beaten off all that was old fashioned, to promote all that was new, and therefore good. Victory for mass-market capitalism. Down with everything else.

The usual heart rate raising loud tune meant that it was nearly time to go on. Zeb psyched himself up for his speech, written for him by a team of four crack rhetoricians.

"We are in a new era." He began "An era in which the efforts of people like yourselves are celebrated as never before..."

The speech went on for some time, scientists who had been named as heroic were feted and cheered from the crowd in the enormous hall. One scientist had even made the front page of the New York Times for his chemical solution to MRSA, which of course even he knew would not last for long before it would come back, far worse than ever. No-one cared about that though, the next solution would pay them even more than this one. For every problem, a profit-making solution. For the few that knew and understood this, hospitals became killing grounds, places where you knew you were likely to find infections no one had ever seen before and for which nature had no fast answer because both problem and solution were man-made.

Children across the country had developed allergies to things they had never been allergic to when they had been allowed out to play, thanks to the media's constant warnings of paedophiles around every corner. This had already boosted the chemical industry as people developed hygiene neuroses thanks to the allergic sniffles of their indoor dwelling progeny. Now adults had also started to show signs of sensitivity and reluctance to do simple things like walking along a busy street. The constant pressure to retain economic growth meant that people obsessed over what was new. You only had to say new, for them to prick up their ears, and 'new' meant 'scientific' now. 'Old' meant 'natural' and 'natural' was dirty and germ ridden. Only the chemicals seemed safe, as long as everything was clean and chemical enhanced, there would be no problem that could not be cured by more chemicals and more 'safe' conventional drugs.

Zeb concluded with another congratulations to the poor innocent chemical workers and scientists for their hard work and breathed a sigh of relief. He went offstage and grabbed his pullover on the way back to his helicopter on the roof. Thank goodness he was going home to Bethany.

Uncle Richard was pleased with the results so far. "I am very happy, Dwayne, very happy. I thought after your mystic trip to the Ukraine maybe you weren't one of us, but you are doing extremely well."

"Thank you. I trust it will be all right if I make another trip?"

"Yes, of course, perhaps I should join you. It seems you had rather a good time."

"Very enlightening, yes, Uncle Richard." Dwayne was unaware of it, but Richard already knew exactly how enlightened he was. Just in case of any problems later, when he upped the death toll. He was quite sure Dwayne's long term boyfriend Edvardo would not appreciate it if he knew about Dwayne's taste for naked women and their brutish husbands.

"Actually takings are up, well done Sam." Michael looked up from the laptop in front of him.

"It's not me really, we have a good reputation and most of the products are labelled as ours now. I'm still getting jeered at the events. No chicks to speak of either, before you ask."

"Is there anything we can do about this?" Don wondered.

"I don't think we have the revenue to fund a media war. The long term fans are unaffected." Sam looked despondent. "Hopefully we can ride it out just by being us."

"Maybe we should invest in some additional marketing for Sam Redwood foods?"

"Be cautious, Don, we don't know how bad this might get. They could drag it out for years." Michael cautioned. "I reckon our strong point is the emphasis on superfoods, Chinese medicine and own brand supplements. We can easily drop a few additional stock lines in the meantime."

"And we have to keep testing everything. We have to stay on top of that."

"How long are we going to have the money for that, Michael?" Sam, for once, looked worried. "I can plough the book revenue in, but it isn't much." He would have offered his share of the TV sales profits too, but that was paying for his many children. "I could see if Annette wants to call in some media favours."

"Yeah, that might be worth a try. Get on some discussion show or something." Don pondered.

"Are you crazy? I don't do discussion. I was thinking more internet ads, newspapers. Quotes and such. You wanna do discussion, you go for it, I don't wanna get lynched by some science geek. Knowing my luck it would be a chick, too." Sam pondered his generalised lack of female attention and 'wood' of late. The picture was not rosy. "Hey, tell you what though, we could sell some water filters to the old faithful?" He brightened a little at that prospect. "We might not get any new prospects, but we can keep the old ones alive."

Joe and Hilary had dropped fifty percent of their stock lines, and were contemplating more.

"We should have taken the offer shouldn't we?" Hilary looked gloomy.

"We'd never have forgiven ourselves. The downside is we can't quit. We have to ride out the storm and hope it dies down. There are still a few thousand diehard fans, and we have plenty in the bank, don't worry, honeybee." Joe was worried, however. The media storm had been blowing for weeks now, and it was showing no sign of abating. The death toll from 'freak' health food incidents was now in the hundreds, and the Republican party had responded in typical fashion, calling for an immediate ban on all health food products and alternative health supplements. The factions of the entire population associated with the parties were splitting, gun-toting militarists shouting about stupid hippies and abusing them in the street. Investors withdrawing cash from ethical business, in case it was somehow tainted with anything 'natural.' Some of the health food related incidents had spread to Europe, although, Joe noticed, not nearly as many. What could be causing this massive supply chain problem?

The Whites had plenty of money and two lobbyists in Washington for their many health food businesses. In fact, their businesses and their associates seemed to be suffering more than anyone. It just didn't make sense. Superficially at least, they were presenting arguments to defend alternative health, and their rather weak counter strikes against the tsunami of enthusiasm for all that was 'scientific' were all over the media. Obviously a very expensive operation, too, defending their companies against the mounting weight of evidence against them.

What on earth was going on? Joe wandered out to socialise with the horses, taking his spirulina, chia and mango green smoothie with him. How could this situation possibly happen?

Peter looked up from packing his bag. "Are you ready Lovely? We have to go now if we're going to catch the plane."

"Sure." Lovely, fresh from her latest cycling victory, finished wrapping sports clothing into tight rolls, zipped up her bag and picked up the passports. "Will Ferdie be up when we get there?"

"Hopefully not." Peter could imagine the list of moans he could look forward to. But the summerhouse is open, he said so."

On the long drive to the airport they snuggled together in the back seat as Lovely's father drove. It was going to be a tiring, hot trip in the Australian summer heat.

Johan peered across the wooden table at his father. "I don't have to decide this quickly dad, do I? This could all blow over, and it certainly shouldn't affect my products forever. I don't have any suppliers to worry about. The whole product comes from me."

"All it takes, son, is one White Industries crop spraying plane claiming to have sprayed the wrong farms and you've had it. I think you should consider keeping livestock." Johan's father had been ranting about the evils of the White family for the last half hour. He knew in his heart this was all down to them.

"You think I should put polythene over the bottom fields?"

"It might be an idea to protect something, yes. You can't protect it all though. You have to hang onto the land, Johan, don't let them get the land. Did you even get into profit before this hit?" His father knew it was borderline at best, the wild food products had been slow to sell at all.

"Couple of weeks' worth and then it all kicked off."

"They have more than enough money and resources to kill everything that doesn't suit them, including you son. It's wise to be ahead of the game. I think you and Harvey should discuss starting a few sheep at least." Sheep had a lower quality requirement than cattle, and the land could still be left wild if Johan was right and it would all blow over. His father remained as practical as ever as he tried to compromise with his son.

"I really don't want to be a sheep farmer dad, but I see what you mean." Johan knew that if the wild plants were affected, the whole wild ecosystem he was carefully allowing to generate could break down. He was learning to appreciate his father's determination to keep his land free of White Industries GM chemical-enhanced profits.

Gary was at Ferdie's place on the tropical island in the West Indies he had chosen for his home. "Gee, Ferdie, It's so unspoilt here."

"Not really, this is the tourist bit, the rest of it is the same as everywhere else. Only one fruit death here, but it's only a matter of time and then it will be the same as everywhere." Ferdie looked up from putting the finishing touches on his new book, the working title and filename of which was 'Sam Redwood ate chicken soup once.' He tried to think of a better title as Gary wandered out to the pool. He couldn't think of one, but it would come to him eventually, he thought.

His lovely wife pottered around the baby fruit trees she was bringing on for planting, chemical free in the garden later in the year. "You should stay on, Peter is coming later." She called to Gary.

"Oh good, yes, I might get a later flight tomorrow and say hello." Gary was not a fan of Peter's, but he thought the new, less slim line version, might be marginally more fun to be around and tease him less. Gary did not have a lot to say about sport. Peter did not have a lot to say about Tantric Yoga.

"What do you think I should call this book? Can you take a look, Gary, and tell me what to call it?" Ferdie said softly in his charming French-Canadian accent.

"Yeah sure I'll take a look." Gary replaced Ferdie at the computer and started to read.

The Whites had gathered for another family event at their favourite restaurant. Everyone was as usual, dressed in their best designerwear and the table was set for the lynchpins at the very top of the White Industries tree: Richard, the patriarch, Eddie, head of the genetic engineering division, Casper, who had by far the biggest job as CEO of the chemical companies, Belinda, his wife, from Strategy and Planning, Dwayne's cousin Oscar, the media whizzkid, his sister Lynne, Operational Development, Dwayne's brother Colin, political and legal decision maker, and of course Dwayne, the general floating dogsbody and whipping boy. They were celebrating Richards sixty ninth birthday.

"I'd just like to say Richard, how marvellous you look, and congratulations to everyone for a marvellous year."

"Thank you Casper, you have done particularly well. I hear you got a personal mention at the Chemical convention as achiever of the year." Richard gave a warmish smile. "I am very pleased with the way things are going."

They ordered the most sumptuous seven course meal they could muster without vomiting, and sat in the usual state of family political role playing, pretending to laugh and joke for Richard's benefit as he tucked in to his usual foie gras, lobster and wild mushrooms.

Dwayne thought gloomily that he couldn't wait for his flight to the Ukraine for another dose of Dmitri-therapy.

"What a strange time to get this? What do you think Aldous, do we want 'an estimated' two and a half million for the film rights to 'Raw Scandal?" Kira took a swig of Scottish spring water and looked up grumpily.

"Some sort of backlash, do you think?"

"I doubt it. Ah yes I see, it's an American film company. They won't stick to the story, they never do. They'll probably cast someone ridiculous in the main roles too. Have a look online, does White Industries have a film division?"

Aldous ran a search on the computer "Yes, they do, but it isn't that company."

"Get the number of their film company, will you? Is it a biggish one?"

"Yes, very, they bought it six months ago."

"Great. Get on the phone to them and offer them the rights for five million." Kira got up and walked to the window where one of her cats sat, mewing absent-mindedly.

"Why? They will make a mockery of it? Do you actually want more people to die?" Aldous was very confused now. This was cold even for Kira.

"More people will die anyway. Make it ten million. And it's on condition that it goes into production within a month and is released within six. That should keep the film division busy."

"Kira, why are you saying these awful things? You don't care about money, you are the least corruptible person I know? What is going on?"

Kira shrugged. "I didn't get the keys to the raw food Ferrari I needed to stop them, instead I got blocked on facebook, why should I care? I'm a nobody, remember? If I don't do it, someone else will. Let them talk you down from ten million. I'm not greedy. It's not really about the money anyway, it's just an arbitrary figure when it gets to that amount. We can put it into the business."

The raw food Ferrari meaning Sam, surmised Aldous. Why on earth did she think so highly of that twit? "OK if you're sure."

"I'm sure. What's the death count like on the database?" Kira had several people across the world monitoring and entering the deaths from health and organic food related incidents to keep score in her Google documents.

"Nearly three thousand as from this morning. It should pass it today."

"What's the country data looking like?"

"Mainly America, North and South. Increasing in parts of Asia."

"Possible wind issue, do you think?"

"Possible. It looks more like people ordering stuff from the US to be honest."

"It hasn't peaked yet, then. The big wave is still to come. Right, Aldous, let's see if we can make a deal with the devil." Kira flashed Aldous a joyless smile.

Malcolm was on the phone to Sam. "I'm just not sure it's worth doing this year, to be honest." He had looked at the prospects for this year's diabetes festival and thought the returns might be too small for the authors to consider.

"Malcolm, to be honest I think it might not either, but let's do it anyway. You're relatively safe out there and can give them chemical-free produce for the week. We have to keep as many people aware of the alternative as possible."

"You've seen all the stuff about me in the papers?" Malcolm was depressed about the coverage of his former career that had been stumped up by a nosy 'science' journalist.

"Forget that, it just means more people know about you. After 'Raw Scandal' came out I thought it was real nasty but I had so many chicks after my hot bod. It was great. For every sharp intake of breath there is a customer waiting to happen. Don't forget that. The old stoners are probably all buying from Joe after what they dug up about him."

"Right." Malcolm couldn't really see the parallel between being considered a hot rampant ready-for-anything stud and a failed doctor or weedhead football player, but never mind.

"We need to get together and talk anyway. Is Zeb likely to be there this year?"

"It was an accident that he was there last year so no."

"Give him a ring, will ya? Don't tell him I asked. He mustn't know 'I've been nice to him." Sam chewed his lip, and smiled a little.

"Sure Sam, I will." A very puzzled Malcolm did as he was asked. A free month in the anti-stress lodge should cover it, he thought as he phoned Zeb.

Peter woke up in Ferdie's summerhouse drenched in sweat. Something had happened in the night. He felt terrible. Lovely had got up early to train on Ferdie's wife's bike. He was alone. He tried to move. He ached all over. He decided to try and sleep it off, whatever it was, but he was terribly thirsty.

A few hours later Lovely came back to find him fast asleep and very flushed. She tried feeling his forehead. He was roasting hot. Not again, she thought.

She went into the house and found Ferdie, still editing his book, now entitled Raw Revenge.

"Peter is sick."

"He isn't hot is he?"

"Very."

"That's how the fruit sickness starts. We need to call a doctor, I'm sorry. I hope you insured?"

"No, we don't usually bother."

"I'm sorry. We really do need to call one. The other guy died."

"OK" Lovely wasn't unduly worried given the amount they had in the bank. They had come here to plan their investigation into the fruit deaths. She didn't want Peter to be one of them.

On autopilot, she went and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and took it out to him. What could possibly be causing this? It couldn't just be chemical spraying, they had done that for years and the fruit was fine. Something in the water? That would be detectable, surely. The deaths had mainly, but not entirely been in the USA. Only a couple in Australia. What could it be?

Joe, not surprisingly, was the first to figure it out. Kira had thoughtfully provided a rundown of the entire White family, including the extended family and middle management, on her online network, part of the business. She hadn't included much in the way of a clue, but she had been extremely informative in her news article 'Names to look out for in chemicals and genetic modification.'

"They're at war with themselves. It's all fake."

"Is the world really that corrupt, are you not being a bit paranoid, Joe?" Hilary held onto their daughter's hands as she tried to toddle.

"Who does this benefit in the end Hilary? I had no idea the world was this sick. No wonder Kira says she doesn't bother watching the news. All the money they've spent is nothing compared to what they'll make." Joe was despondent. "We've been being set up for years."

"There must be something we can do."

"All they have to do now is make sure the organic crops start to fail and they've pretty much won the media war. They're probably breeding GM insects right now that can take care of anything organic without anything being detectable."

"Is that possible?"

"Yeah they already did an official release of GM mosquitoes in Florida a couple of years back. Covered on the news."

"We're screwed, aren't we, cuddlemonkey?" Hilary sent him a bemused and rather rueful smile.

"Looks like it. Time we retired, honeypops?

"This is not what I want happening under my name, Richard." Dwayne was, for once, openly furious. He had returned from another trip to the Ukraine, refreshed and happy, that morning. When he had checked the online news, Kira's death statistics had been released. "You have to stop this now."

"You must be joking Dwayne, we aren't going to do this twice. We've come too far to stop now. Out with the old, in with the new. Just wait till you see what I have hatching in the factories." He smiled coldly. "If you interfere, Dwayne, you know what happened to your brother."

Kieran froze. His brother had drowned in a yachting accident five years ago. As this information sank in, it occurred to him that his brother had never seemed particularly interesting or rebellious. What could he have done?

"What are you saying, Richard?" he tried.

"I think it's pretty clear, don't you? Just keep your nose out of it and carry on as normal. There's a prize for the correct response." Richard raised an eyebrow.

"What prize?" Dwayne elected to play along.

"Wait and see, Dwayne. I have something very special for you when we've completed the operation."

The conversation turned to more general matters and Dwayne outwardly remained composed whilst he inwardly churned. He hadn't realised he was a member of the Borgia family. Something goes wrong and they terminate you? What was wrong with these people? Was the business so important that it was worth killing thousands of people? He had always known he was a bit different from the rest of the family. Now he realised all that he suffered from was compassion and a lack of fear, bordering on stupidity.

Kira and Aldous finished watching the early edit of 'Raw Scandal – The Triumph of Science' and made some tea in silence. Aldous broke the silence as they sat down, Kira's cat returning to his usual place on her shoulder, purring loudly as they did so. "Well, was that really worth selling out for?"

"Oh, yes, I think it's perfect. Sam looks like a rapist, Joe looks like a drug addict, Malcolm looks like Dr Evil. Peter looks like a treehugging Kim jong il. It's perfect. After the final edits are complete I think they will get exactly what they want out of it."

"Couldn't you veto it or something? "

"Why would I want to do that? Don't worry about it Aldous. You have to understand, this is how a free market political economy with no commercially independent media, a constitution that supports business lobbying and no monarchy to talk them down, actually works. Soon they will start talking about changing laws in response to public hysteria. That's what happens in the land of the free. They never learn. It's one long team game of booing and cheering."

"What's monarchy got to do with it?" Aldous still retained the stupidity of his father, thought Kira.

"When something like this happens in our country, we have the equivalent of someone at the keyboard of a computer game to comment on it. It's like a safety catch on a rifle. Charles was one of the first major opponents of GM adoption, and he took a big risk coming out to say so before anyone else had really thought about it. The fact he's an organic farmer himself probably helped, right enough, but I've told you before, that's what our aristocracy is really for, protecting the actual land itself. Also, the law is a matter for the crown, not the state, so the state can't make kneejerk laws for purely political reasons. The Royals don't get a choice about being Royal either. I don't really know why I keep having to remind you of that. Jewel encrusted slavery is still slavery, and they take their slavery very seriously, unlike the rest of us."

"Right." Aldous had heard this before, but he always had to go through it again.

"We keep them rich because we need someone who doesn't care about money to think about the nation and promote it. Digging it yet?"

"Sort of, yeah." Aldous was too full of the socialist rhetoric he'd heard as a child about 'rich toffs' to ever really accept Kira's feudal hypothesis. He had heard it many times before, but it still didn't sink in.

Kira knew perfectly well they would be having this conversation again in another six months in some other context, so she moved on. "So, I'm guessing you didn't like the film then?"

There was a long pause. "I don't understand why you're letting them do this to themselves. Do you hate America?"

"Not really, but you know me Aldous, I'm fully capable of laying siege to Carthage, or wherever else, when I want something." Kira bestowed Aldous with her cruel empress look. "The film is perfect. The sooner they put it out and the American public go wild for all that is scientific the better." The cat climbed down into Kira's lap and wriggled contentedly as she picked up her sewing. She impishly battered her eyelashes at Aldous. "I think the ducks are on the croquet lawn again. If Sam should contact you, please inform him he now has cause for a lawsuit against White Industries, should he want one, not that he'll win. I do not wish to speak to him." She offered Aldous her well-practised flirty-stubborn expression, one of the range Aldous knew extremely well.

"I think I'll stick with the ducks, thanks." Aldous chuckled as he went out to herd the naughty ducks back to the pond. He had no idea what she was up to this time, but it was always fun waiting to find out. Sam wouldn't understand her in a million years, he giggled as he passed her artwork 'Raw Sex Object' in the hallway.

The speakers at Malcolm's event this year included Zeb, doing motivational classwork all week in addition to speaking at the finale. Since Zeb's diary had become less frantic since the 'rebirth by fire' incident, he was quite keen to do some work for a month in exchange for his private pool and lodge in the anti-stress zone. In fact, he was positively enjoying himself for the first time in years, talking to people for a change instead of at them.

Peter and Lovely had also joined the rest of the speakers at the event, this year renamed the raw event to attract more campers. It had taken Peter months to recover from the fruit poisoning. He was now enjoying more green salads as a result.

Malcolm had provided a second refurbished outbuilding, but they all found it more fun to gather in the living room to read, swap recipes and annoy each other for the week.

"I'm telling you, it's all them. They've created a fake 'nature versus science' war using their own companies." Joe, wide-eyed, was waving his arms in the air as he spoke.

"Don't be so paranoid, Joe, that would be a very expensive war." Sam was disdainful.

"Think about it Sam, who benefits at the end if the science fad wins." Don caught on. The thought of his beloved bison eating from non-indigenous land horrified him. They could just crop-spray everything, he thought. Rumour had it that White Industries had enough chemicals to crop-spray the whole world twice over with pesticide and weed killer.

"The insects, man, they're breeding insects." Joe was still arm flailing.

"What can we do?" Gary was at the window, looking at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. He was still half in on the conversation as he wondered what to say to her.

"Yes, we can't stop this, we don't have the money. Unless we asked the farmers?" Johan knew this wouldn't work even as he said it. Few produce growers operated on a massive profit basis, even fewer organic growers.

There was a lengthy silence. Gary wondered if the girl would even look at him. She would probably tell him to get lost. He was probably too thin for her now, he thought morbidly.

"I say we kill them." Lovely stood up. "I say we kill them all." The stress of the last couple of years suddenly fell away as she contemplated this in a beautiful moment of clarity. They all looked at each other. Did they really have no option?

"Wouldn't the management just take over where they left off? Should we take them out too?" Zinca didn't look remotely phased by the idea of killing anyone. She toyed with the ends of her beautiful hair and looked quite cheerful about the idea.

"I'm pretty sure the management didn't decide to spend millions of bucks buying up health food companies in order to destroy the entire industry." Sam said. "This is crazy. You're all crazy. I have to think about this." He went to his room, grabbing a handful of trail mix from the coffee table as he left. Gary decided to approach the most beautiful girl in the world. Sometimes you just know, even if she is twice your weight and a total stranger.

Anastasia had learned quite a lot of English since Dwayne's visits had become a regular affair. She now had him hogtied at the bottom of the pedestal under her bed. Dmitri stood with a sturdy foot on his chest as she spoke.

"You have done homework?"

"Yes mistress Ana." Dwayne was really learning a lot about himself these days. "I believe." He had practised meditation, astral projection and 'regressive time travelling' in the course of his studies, and had found he quite enjoyed it. He still wasn't all that sure how enlightening it was, but if it made mistress happy it was all good.

"Good. Your uncle. He has insects. Not good."

"You aren't suggesting what I think you're suggesting?" Dwayne looked extremely nervous. He didn't want to die in Anastasia's service. It was far too expensive to include his own demise. The township was getting quite large now, and he was aware he had funded a significant part of it with his visits. He was currently on the floor of the main bedroom of Anastasia's pink palace.

"Think of Edvardo. Find the insects before release." She stared at him, scowling as usual. How the hell did she know about Edvardo? Or these insects, whatever she was on about?

"I think they are all over America, even I can't find them all. How do you know all this?"

"I see it in out of body experience. Insects must not get out. You must believe, Dwayne."

"I believe." What the hell was he being set up for? He had to stop coming here, he thought. This was getting dangerous. However she knew these things, if the family found out he was prying, he knew what would happen to him. Could Richard somehow be testing him, he wondered? He stopped wondering as Dmitri commenced lightly kicking him in the flank. Ahhh, that was better.

"Thank you mistress."

"God loves science! God loves science!" The audience chanted as the stars of Raw Scandal – Triumph of Science posed on the red carpet on their way into the flashy premiere.

A rash of new 'scientific' churches had sprung up in the midst of the craze for new pharmaceutical and chemical solutions. The newspapers were full of triumphant stories, large and small, of modern marvels of scientific invention. The Republican party were leading in all the polls as the Democrats were seen to be dragging their feet over the mysterious alternative health deaths. Hippies were discarding tasselled tops and sandals for cardigans and leather pumps.

GM farms were considered to be producing the best premium products and the farmers would appear, smiling on the news, boasting of better produce with better profits, all thanks to the wonders of chemistry and genetic engineering. How long would that last when they had wiped out the organic market? The profits would shrink overnight in the face of 'essential' price increases.

The American news, of course, did not report the developing nations who had lost entire crop markets thanks to gene implantation to reduce the need for imported 'natural' solutions. It did not report the subsistence and small farmers forced into industrial city jobs, or worse, starvation, by large companies and politicians alike obsessed by profit and economic growth at any cost. It was prevented from reporting any negative effects at all, in fact, but nobody noticed.

Sam watched this on a big screen whilst sitting with his friends in a bar in LA. His heart sank. Even he had lost hope. They were probably finished, he thought. He had more than enough in the bank not to worry too much, and the children were taken care of, but to lose his life's work to a fake media war and a family of mass murderers was not his idea of a great ending to his own story. Maybe the others had been right. Whatever was the case, he couldn't just sit here, and he was having difficulty getting it up these days, something he thought could not be a coincidence. He put in a call to Zinca on his mobile.

"Game on." He hung up and sipped his bottle of filtered spring water, shipped from his Hawaiian garden. He didn't realise it, but they didn't have long to save the organic crops. The release date for the GM insect soldiers had already been set.

Aldous picked up the phone. To his surprise Craig Ferguson was on the other end, although he didn't recognise his voice at once. Craig was now presenting the 'Late show' on US television, which had massive audience figures. Kira, for once, agreed to take the call.

"I'm amazed you remember me. That party in Dowanhill must have been twenty years ago, Craig." Aldous could only hear one side of the conversation. How on earth did Kira know all these people? Every time they went anywhere they would bump into another one. For a woman who didn't like leaving the house she seemed to get around a lot.

"Glad you liked it. Sure I can do that. Next month is fine. Thanks." Kira replaced the receiver.

"We have to go to America again."

"Is that wise, Kira?"

"No, but let's do it anyway. See if you can get another couple of TV dates for us whilst we're there." She reviewed the death toll. Just over four thousand.

Gary and the 'incredible' Natasha warmly kissed one another goodbye as he headed off to Malcolm's.

"I'd ask you to come, but it's only a week. If we are lucky I should be back. Please don't go anywhere."

"That is OK. I won't." Natasha was looking forward to eating something other than green vegetables while he was away. She was still twice the size of him, but already the raw vegan diet he was encouraging her to try was working its magic. She had had to think very carefully before getting involved with some skinny stranger into apparently sexy yoga, but he seemed nice enough, and after he had explained about his former size, she felt it might just be safe to believe him.

Gary stroked her hair and kissed her again before grabbing his bag. "See you soon."

He headed off to the train station, where he narrowly avoided missing the interstate. When they had planned this out, in anticipation of Sam's eventual agreement, they had arranged that it should be done in a week or less, in different locations across North America. They all had their allotted jobs to do, it was just a question of getting them done.

Dwayne had spent the last month frantically trying to find out where the insect breeding factories were, but with limited success. He wondered whether it might be worth showing some interest.

"Uncle Richard, how are you planning to finish off your job on health food and organics?"

"Now, now Dwayne, you know I'm not going to discuss that."

"You know, since you're seventieth is next year, it might be smart to consider 'training me' a little?" he tried to sound more like the rest of his family.

"It's my seventieth next year and I will be leaving you a legacy of the strongest company in the world, thanks to my work and my decisions. That's important to me, to know that I did that for all of you." Dwayne was astonished to see any self-awareness at all from Richard, so he pressed on.

"Specifically, I was wondering if I could help with the organics project. I'm not very busy at the moment, is there anything I could do with that? If anything were to happen to you...."

"Nothing is going to happen to me, and the organics project will be released next week. It's already set up and there is nothing for you to worry about."

"What if you wanted to delay it?"

"Why would I want to do that? We've been working on it for years."

"I'm not suggesting you should, but what if you actually wanted to delay it? Could it be delayed?"

"I don't like the sound of this conversation Dwayne. I have no intention of delaying it. Should I want to, I would call Eddie, he has his instructions, beyond that he has no idea what is going to happen either. He isn't directly responsible for anything, he just has to do as he's told. As do you."

"Sorry, Uncle Richard, of course." Dwayne decided to give up at that point. Eddie would give nothing away, of course but at least he had some sort of lead. Not a chemical project then. Insects. Anastasia was right. They would have to release them all over the country though, so they had to be connected to the chemical plants, not the genetic engineering labs. Very smart – the wrong path to the right place.

Casper and Belinda White of the chemicals and planning department were swingers. They regularly attended swing parties at houses near their home and had enjoyed a variety of strangers over their years together. Richard was of course aware of this, but prudently did not let them know that he had any inkling of their chosen pastime. It had been decided amongst the group, therefore, that Sam and Zinca were best placed to 'take care' of them. And so it was that Sam and Zinca, not bosom buddies at the best of times, had taken to going to swing parties in Casper and Belinda's local area. Zinca had managed to keep out of the 'action' so far, but Sam was, of course, in his element.

Zinca carried a small black leather case to these parties, and as usual, she had it with her tonight.

"Call yourself a vegan with a leather handbag?" Sam asked irritably, as they got out of the car outside the painted bungalow.

"Well you called yourself a vegan for long enough wearing wool, didn't you, Sam? Besides, I need to be equipped."

"Equipped for what? We're supposed to remove them, not turn them on." Sam assumed that the case contained a variety of sex toys, and was annoyed that he was unlikely to discover what they were.

"If we ever manage to actually find them, you may or may not find out." Now you go ahead and do your thing and I'll wait by the table with food in case they drift in. These parties are very dull. I hope they turn up soon." Zinca was very tired of the inane conversations with strangers. Most of them seemed to expect not to speak much beyond a hello, which made it difficult to extricate yourself from their intentional activity, swinging. You couldn't blame them, she supposed. It really wasn't very nice of her to go to swingers' parties and not actually swing. This was the fifth one this week, however, and she was getting a bit tired of it.

At ten o'clock or so they walked in, dressed, Zinca supposed, appropriately. She brightened a little at that. Casper made straight for her.

"Hi."

"Hi, would you and your wife like to join me somewhere a bit quieter?" Zinca had picked up the lingo in the course of her rather boring week.

An hour later, she located Sam in the 'hot room,' with six strangers of both genders and hissed into the darkness. "It's time to go."

"Man. Right I suppose I have to leave you lovely people, so sorry." A couple of people, their mouths evidently full of something Zinca was thankful she could not identify in the darkness, murmured acknowledgement.

"Where are we going then? " He said as he dressed hurriedly. "Are they here yet?"

"Been and gone Sam, been and gone. He had a nasty looking fungal infection in his toe, we could have cured that."

"What did you yell me for then? Oh, Oh, you mean like gone gone?

"I am afraid so, Sam, you missed the action." Zinca tried to look seductive as another few people passed them to join the others in the hot room. "I think we should go now though, before the crowd thins out." She clasped her small leather case. "Shame you never got to see what I had in here. Quite old fashioned. You probably wouldn't approve of the CFCs." She smiled. "Let's go home. I don't want to miss my favourite Ukrainian soap opera."

Oscar White was in Zeb's helicopter. Zeb had been asked to take him on a tour, incorporating a visit to Malcolm's. He was under the impression a possible land deal was being struck from what Malcolm had said, and so he didn't think anything of it when Malcolm had asked him to give them a lift. They were having lunch anyway, so why not go away for the weekend? Oscar for his part, had no idea where they were going. They had just assumed it was something Zeb liked doing with clients offering a million or so for a corporate convention.

"Now you know I'm going to have to take Zeb out of the way, do you both know what you have to do?" Malcolm was visibly shaking at the prospect of what lay ahead.

"Yes, I think we are pretty clear, aren't we Valerie?" Gary felt surprisingly calm. Valerie nodded. "Let's just hope it works."

"Time that old river bed was filled in anyway. It's going to be a long, long day tomorrow, that's for sure, trying to explain this away to Zeb."

They watched as the helicopter landed at the back of the dusty expanse behind the house.

"Here goes." Malcolm moved forward to greet his guests, only one of whom would be leaving in a couple of days.

The following day, they walked talked, practised meditation. Oscar seemed like a nice guy, too, Malcolm was grateful that he was in charge of distracting Zeb. In the afternoon Malcolm took Zeb to the main house to 'talk business' while Gary and Valerie took Oscar out to the earth pile, left over from the river redirection. One of the neighbour's diggers was right next to it. Gary taught Oscar to sun dance. Valerie jumped into the cab of the digger and commenced lifting earth and dumping it in the river. She had a pile of lime next to it, she put this into a particularly deep crack in the river bed nearby.

Strange sort of relaxation, with a digger right next to you, thought Oscar, just before the digger dropped a large scoopful of earth on top of him. What just happened? He thought, when it all went dark. That's heavy, he thought as the digger ran over the top of the earth on top of him. He didn't think much after that. Valerie scooped him up along with the earth and dumped him onto the lime in the deeper ravine. She shifted the rest of the earth pile on top, and then both riverbed and Oscar vanished into the ground, perfectly flat after she had finished moving the pile they had been dancing on.

Gary clapped as she jumped down. "He seemed so nice too, apart from the nasal congestion, that was distracting. I'm sure we could have helped him get rid of that."

"Yes, shame isn't it? I feel a little bad too." They had no idea how close they still were to losing the remaining organic and herbal medicine industry. If they had, they wouldn't have worried about what they were doing at all.

Lynne White had been allocated to Michael and Don. Don had taken the long flight south to stay with Michael. Michael proudly showed him his chosen weapon. An old Chinese blowpipe, beautifully enamelled, and a small box of darts.

"So we have to get her in an enclosed space out of CCTV reach. That's tough. Are you sure we shouldn't just take her shooting or something?" Don scoffed.

"She walks through Chinatown every day. Just stop and ask her for the time next to an alley or something. There are lots of canopies and stuff to stop us getting caught on CCTV, don't worry." Michael was soft voiced and as usual, very calm.

When they finally got around to it after Lynne left work that day, it did not go smoothly. The dart Michael blew bounced off her neck and Don had to bundle her into the alley behind a trashcan, whereupon Michael grabbed one of the remaining poison darts and stuck it in her neck by hand. Messy. They left her where she was and wandered through the back of a Chinese medicine shop, owned by a friend of Michael's before emerging from an adjoining casino some time later.

"Shame about the bad skin."

"Yeah, dairy didn't agree with her at all." Don agreed as they returned to the car. "I quite liked this shirt, damn."

Colin White, Dwayne's remaining brother, emerged from the Senate building. He had been working that day and now had to make the long drive 200 miles south to get back to his usual office for the following day. He got into his car, made his way out of the city and drove into the wild expanse between him and home.

Peter and Lovely, thanks to some intelligence gathered by Joe, expected him to be on top of the hill they were sitting on in forty minutes. They sat and enjoyed the view until they spotted the car coming up the long dusty hill towards them.

"Go for it Lovely." Peter hid behind a large boulder.

Lovely took her top off and stood proudly displaying the famously fabulous tits. She motioned as if looking for a lift. The car duly stopped by the cliff top.

"Hi, would you like to come out and play first. I'm only going to the next town." Colin could not believe his luck. A gorgeous Australian backpacker, he assumed, wanted some attention and company. Colin, a rather bloated forty something, had not had any female attention in years, and he didn't even have to chat this one up.

As he stood outside his car, viewing the fabulous breasts, Peter cracked his skull open with a large rock. He swung round to see his attacker briefly as Lovely finished him off with a second rock.

"Done and dusted, Lovely."

"Yip. Gloves on, bag over the head, stick him in the car with the bikes."

They did so, and drove the car to a cliff on another road, where he would be less likely to be discovered. They took the bikes out and put him in the driving seat. Together they rolled the car off the cliff, in traditional motion picture manner, and watched as it crashed into the crevice below the cliff. There was no satisfying motion picture explosion to go with it. Just as well they were wearing gloves.

"They shouldn't find it for a while, should they?"

"Shouldn't think so, Lovely. He wasn't supposed to be here. Bit out of shape, wasn't he?" Peter rubbed his chest.

"Can we go home now?" Lovely put her top back on. She was a little chilly.

"I should think so, we have to cycle the 100km to the next town first, love."

"Should have remembered to get more water."

"I'm sure we'll find some on the way."

Joe and Hilary had decided to make more indirect arrangements for the dispatch of Eddie White, head of the genetic engineering division. He was in Venezuela, making arrangements for the expansion of the insect project to the cacao and berry plantations, just in case the superfood market managed to survive the death of health and organic food. Plenty of vigilante groups and hired killers there, thought Joe, and via the South American verbal contact network, the job was organised. Eddie was due to vanish the following day. He was terminally greeted by a passing gunman as he left the home of a charming transsexual he had met in a bar.

When the job was done, Joe was notified via the untraceable village grapevine. Phew, he thought.

Peggy, posing as a kitchen assistant, had been working in the White family's favourite restaurant for two weeks prior to the allotted week they had allotted to 'get the job done. Richard was due for his Tuesday lunch. Fortunately his taste for wild mushrooms made the job a relatively simple one. Peggy just had to make sure his wild mushroom soup was more wild than usual.

It wasn't as straightforward as it might appear. The chefs at the restaurant were extremely fussy, and Peggy didn't want to make any of them ill, so she settled for a hefty garnish of raw as it sat on the hotplate for the waiter, rather than trying to include her special mushrooms into the soup as they were making it, fresh for him as usual.

By dessert he was feeling a little ill, by coffee pulling at his collar. By the time he got back to his car, Richard knew he was not going to survive. What had he done to deserve this? All he wanted was glory for the family business. He tried to force himself to move the car. The sensation was leaving his limbs. He frantically tried to give Eddie the order to go ahead with the organic plans without him, but of course Eddie did not get the message. Instead, a Venezuelan prostitute saw it, dismissed it and replaced the sim on her nice new phone.

Peggy was fired, of course, that afternoon, for her 'unattractive' soup garnishing, but no one thought much more about it until the body was found and the 'mysterious' Helen, AKA Peggy, had simply disappeared, back to Johan's farm in a faraway state.

Kira survived make-up and was backstage before the show. Craig fluttered around nervously. She had never seen someone so frantic. He hadn't changed a bit.

"Now, you've seen the show haven't you? You know what to expect?" Craig hadn't actually remembered her at all, but it suited him that she thought he did, so he pretended to be a friend of hers as they waited to go on.

"Yes, Craig, it's fine. I know exactly what to expect."

The usual introduction to the show, a stuffed monkey was involved on this one. Kira waited, surprised to find herself slightly bored by the whole idea by the time she was called onto the set.

"Now Kira, you'll be glad to know I've seen the film and read the book. You don't look like I expected you to look."

"How nice. I'm not a hippy, no, unless I avoid the hairdresser for a while."

The audience laughed.

"I couldn't help but notice Kira, that they were a bit different from each other. Did you like the film at all?"

"Yes, I think the film suited its purpose perfectly." Kira gave a thin-lipped smile.

"Are you sure? I gather from the book that you don't like science?" Craig waved his head around, implying that either he or she was a little stupid.

The audience laughed again, cued to verify that she was stupid.

"Yes I'm sure. I don't actually dislike science; I think you've missed the point of the book a little there. I am not sure when this idea, that anything natural was automatically unscientific, was first mooted but it's not correct. Nature isn't incompatible with science, it's incompatible with industrial processing."

"Oh?" He tried his expansive shocked look.

"The book wasn't really about alternative health and science at all. That was the plot, but it wasn't the main theme of the book. The film has made the main theme of the book clear to anyone that has actually seen and read it."

"What do you mean there Kira?" Craig was genuinely interested now. Kira warmed up.

"Well, it's really all about the role of cultural economics. The main character in the book is a cultural economist. I didn't remind the reader too often right enough, but that's what the book is really about."

"Tell us more?" Craig was still putting his entertainment face on, but this was clearly news to him.

"Sometimes it takes a small fat ugly nobody to show how an entire nation can be manipulated by any company which has been allowed to integrate far too many businesses and make far too much profit."

This was way too serious a point for Craig's job not to be on the line. "So its profit you don't like, then? You don't like profit? Or feeding the world?" He tried to bring things back on track by implying that science alone provided these things.

"We've been able to feed the world by conventional means since the mid-eighties. The reason we don't is to stop poor countries competing with a labour advantage. For the benefit of the audience, one out of the 1.8 people dying per second are in poverty related conditions so that you can all work, so that you will vote the right way and go shopping. As for profit, it's perfectly OK too, until one company can afford to buy such a large proportion of an opposing industry that they can destroy it. Destroying the market for health food has cost the culprit a billion at most, a tax deductible drop in the ocean for some companies. They don't even have to sabotage the supplies in the real world, someone was just in a hurry. It's all in the book, if you look more closely."

"And you based this in America? Do you hate America?" Craig was so nervous that he was trying to attack her now. Kira remained calm.

"No, I hate that no one seems to be able to see that integrated corporations are now bigger than countries and the real economic war is what used to be considered macro versus micro, as in – government versus business. The old economics is effectively obsolete. As I demonstrate in the book, and hopefully the audience are realising right now, it is now possible to manipulate an entire country's voting, consumer, faith and individual self-belief from the comfort of an office chair. People need to be educated to vote with their wallets. The American people, in particular, need to have something to compare themselves to, and they need news and programming that isn't sponsored. We know, Craig, that the UK, for example, isn't exactly angelic. But we also know, because we are small and supplied with the relevant information via a non-commercial media, that we are not always right. All I wanted to demonstrate to the American people is to be very wary of what they see and hear, because none of it is independent. It is all bought and paid for."

Craig was stunned. He had expected a stupid hippy, angry about the 'brave new world' manipulation of her little raw vegan story. He had not expected this. The subject was now way too heavy for his audience, he heard his earpiece ping with the yelling of the manager in the crowsnest. He moved his earpiece where he did not have to suffer the pinging.

"What's the answer?" he said, dropping any of his professional expressions. This would either make or break his career, he thought ruefully, but it was great TV.

"The answer is to legally prevent any company do something like, for example, genetic modification purely for the purposes of selling their own chemicals, or sponsor news programmes on every single channel, for another example. It's pretty obvious that having someone patent your agriculture, produce your food, sell your food and then produce the ingredients to medicate your illness is a bad idea. We should force such companies to split and declare interest and research so that it can be externally investigated. That way biotech companies can monitor each other and government steps in when the analysis becomes dubious, rather than the current system of accepting a company's own findings. The system of corporate representation and lobbying on things like daily diet advice is also wrong, which is why I picked on the raw vegans. The World Health Organisation says nine to fifteen portions of fruit and vegetables per day, not five. We are told five in the UK and USA to enable the eating of more industrially manufactured products because the industries are represented on the nutrition boards. There are many examples of such corporate sponsored scandals, these are the most screamingly urgent ones. If your audience would be interested, I have the death rate statistics on the health food and organics scandal. I can show you how obvious it is that it was a corporate set-up to anyone outside the country."

"We have limited time on the programme, Kira, I'm sorry, this is fascinating." Craig was being yelled at to get her off. Kira smiled.

"Thank you very much Craig, it was very kind of you to have me."

The audience, stunned and confused, had to be cued to clap. Aldous, sitting at the back, reached for his mobile to get the first possible flight home. Kira with a bullet in the head wouldn't pay his wages, he thought.

Aldous brought the bags into the house. Kira drove off in her shiny red sports car to pick up the cats. She could never resist getting the cats back. She found it hard to consider that she was home without them. The phone rang. Aldous picked it up.

"Hi it's Sam Redwood. I'm looking for Kira Cedar?" Aldous nearly fainted with shock. Kira must have gone up in the world, he thought.

"Try back in an hour. We're only just back. Can I tell her what you want?"

"I'm not sure. Tell her it's business, anyway."

"OK."

When Kira finally got back and unboxed the cats, Aldous wondered whether to tell her. No, it would spoil the lovely surprise. He decided to go out so that she would have to answer the phone herself.

Kira was startled when it rang again. Should she answer it? It might be one of her horrible relatives.

"Hello?"

"Sam Redwood."

"Oh really." She wasn't annoyed, but she wasn't expecting a good call, either.

"I saw you on the Late show."

"Right. I just assumed you were phoning to sue me or something." Kira had never really got over him suing Peter. Suing was deeply uncool, she thought. He would probably want to sue her for not being a twenty one year old cheerleader or presuming to try to give him a present, she thought.

"No. I just wanted to say I liked what you had to say." He sounded defeated. She wondered why.

"Is that it?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Great, well do call back when you have something else to say, won't you? Have you unblocked me yet?"

"Are you still pissed about that?" he now sounded amused. Kira generously decided to interpret this as 'gentle.'

"Of course I am. I want to write the goddamn book already. You're a really crap muse, you know that?"

"Write the goddamn book. And save my number, OK?"

Wow, what had Kira done to deserve this? "Sure." It probably meant nothing to him, but it was everything to Kira. She put the phone down and started to weep. Aldous found her hiding in bed when he got back, still crying, the cats mewing and pawing at her.

"What did he say? Is he taking the artwork?" Aldous was appalled. Kira was not usually one of the world's weepy women.

"Oh, no, just to go ahead and write the book. That was big of him wasn't it? And he told me to save his number. Only because I got on that frightful TV show. Oh God, he's a horrid boy, simply horrid. He probably doesn't even understand there's anything wrong with that. He probably thought it was a sodding networking opportunity to make him more pawpyoolaaahr." Kira sniffed and drawled.

"You should have been able to tell from the poncho and the Hawaiian shirts." Aldous laughed heartily as he went to 'pick up some chicks.' The ducklings had again strayed from the pond.

Kira looked at her tear streaked face in the mirror and agreed at last that yes, it was probably time she stopped giving random assholes the benefit of the doubt. She had wanted to give that one the world on a platter, but he only understood how to give and take, not how to be given to. She ought to have been used to it, but she wasn't. Not one of them had understood it, and she supposed nobody ever would, no matter how much bullshit they talked indicating they might possibly 'dig it'. Finer feelings, were, like Kira, out of fashion.

"No-one is ever going to understand it, are they Aldous?" She said when he came back.

"No, I'm afraid not." Poor Sam, thought Aldous, he probably thought he was doing her a big favour by acknowledging her at all.

"Why not?"

"You choose to function in a different world than everyone else. They are all trying to get what they can with the limited time they have, and you keep trying to give them something they don't expect. It doesn't add up to most people, especially the ones you tend to pick. They think you want something they don't have in return."

"I think that's a shame." Kira looked child-like and petulant. She quite liked her magical inspired world of wonder, where random frogs were princes waiting for magic fairy dust and everything had a pleasantly chaotic, easy causality. "It's much nicer in here. Why shouldn't I give people presents if I want to? "

"It is a shame yes, but you really should stop trying it, it makes you miserable, and that was the worst one ever. He probably thought you were an obsessed fan." Kira's muses had never before included anyone remotely well known. They were generally selected for what was missing rather than what was already there. Aldous often wondered what the criteria was.

"Oh I think he knew I wasn't a fan. I don't know about it being the worst, at least I got to demonstrate Cultural Economics in action, even if I am a tiresome novelist now. And I made a lot of art."

Aldous shook his head. "Yeah, but what do you get out of it? Apart from being miserable and now probably in danger if you set foot in the USA again? And please don't say it's not about what you get out of it again, I'll scream."

"I won't." Kira smiled naughtily. She loved being naughty, especially to Aldous. She would miss him when he went back to his normal job. She would be all alone again, to dream of pretty things, lofty gifts to random strangers and swift methods of fixing giant insoluble problems.

"Are you going to write the book?"

"Probably not, I have no reason at all to care what happens to humans in the future. I didn't have any reason to care before Sam, and I have no reason to care now. I'm a nobody, and I don't matter. The back of the artwork is a gravestone, after all. You can never underestimate your own significance, even when asking for nothing and giving to people that don't really deserve it."

Dwayne couldn't understand why he'd been left off the hit list for the rest of his family, but he was very happy to be alive. All those trips to the Ukraine had saved him, but he would never find that out. Now he was a very busy man, reorganising the White family business. The Health food businesses were sold off, compensation paid out to the victims' families and he sold the film company, which still left him with an enormous genetic engineering and chemical company to sort out. Kira's appearance had caused a minor but intense public discussion of what business should and should not be able to do in the USA, which meant his days were possibly numbered even at that.

The police looking into the sudden deaths, had, of course, been to see him. He blithely told them, that, knowing his family, they had all decided to kill each other but they were welcome to investigate whatever they liked. In any case, he was more interested in finding the potential ecological time bomb his uncle had created in the form of the insects. They seemed to be concentrating on Zeb now, he would take them on long helicopter tours of the dusty expanse surrounding Malcolm's land in the vain hope of finding Oscar.

The fruit insects appeared to have fallen away as fast as they had appeared, at least, he thought so. The sharp decline in demand for fruit had meant no deaths for a while, so he assumed the fruit insects had some sort of terminator gene, which was a relief. If the labs, however long it would take him to find them, were ever opened, who knew if or how the presumably large captive population of anti-organic insects would have evolved?
