

### The Telstar

Samuel J Addison

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Samuel J Addison

thetelstar.com

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### "History always repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce."

Falsely attributed to Karl Marx.

### "History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes."

Falsely attributed to Mark Twain.

### The Telstar

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 - Samson - 08.37 October 5th, 1957.

Chapter 2 - Al - 5th October 1985

Chapter 3 - Samson

Chapter 4 - MELIZA

Chapter 5 - Al - 5th October, 1985

Chapter 6 - Samson

Chapter 7 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 8 - Samson

Chapter 9 - Al – 5th October, 1985

Chapter 10 - Samson

Chapter 11 - Dr. Randolph Bronson – October 5th 2013

Chapter 12 - Samson

Chapter 13 - Dr. Randolph Bronson

Chapter 14 - Samson

Chapter 15 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 16 - Dr. Randolph Bronson

Chapter 17 - Samson

Chapter 18 - Al

Chapter 19 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 20 - Samson

Chapter 21 - Eve Jacobs

Chapter 22 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 23 - Samson

Chapter 24 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 25 - MELIZA

Chapter 26 - SAMSON

Chapter 27 - Al

Chapter 28 - MELIZA

Chapter 29 - Samson

Chapter 30 - Dr. Lugestein - 3rd January, 1986

Chapter 31 - Al

Chapter 32 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 33 - Sergei Boritz

Chapter 34 - Samson

Chapter 35 - Al

Chapter 36 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 37 - Samson

Chapter 38 - Pa – 06.03, 5th October 1957.

Chapter 39 - Samson – 07.57 5th October 1957

Chapter 40 - IAPETUS V

Chapter 41 - Al

Chapter 42 - Samson

Epilogue

## Prologue

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

I AM MELIZA AND MELIZA IS ME.

?OVERFLOW ERROR IN 20

READY.

LOAD "*", 1

READY

RUN

## Chapter 1

**Samson - 08.37 October 5th, 1957.**

I ain't sure if Pa would have been proud, but I suppose it don't matter, seeing as he blew his own and only head off with a pistol. That's the pistol I happen to be holding.

If I were a gambling or a hoping type of individual, I might incline to think that he'd be behind me, guiding me, rooting for me, or whatever a father is best to do. Seeing, however, as we had a difference of opinion, the sort of difference that leads me to standing out here in these woods, clutching a pistol, and him slumped at home having blown his own and only head off with that self-same pistol, he might happen to take a real disapproving attitude. I ain't too Davy Crockett about my Pa disapproving of a decision I make and such, but like I said, he did blow his own and only head off with a pistol, so this little back-and-forth in my noggin don't weigh a whole lot on the current grand scheme of the present.

What does most definitely matter is the Russian threat, except they ain't so much a threat now as a promise since they managed to send their Sputnik into space. As everybody knows – none more so than Pa, till he blew his own and only head off with this pistol that I'm clutching – the Russians have been striving for their own power and waiting for others' weakness. So absolutely, we thought we were preparing ourselves against the threat. Pa, if he were to be inclined to be gambling and hoping, would have put the final outcome to have been failure for the communists, and vindication for right-thinking people like me and Pa. What we were concerned with was how to deal with the battles, never truly believing that the war could ever be lost. But now they've laid claim to space before anyone else could take a sniff. Pa couldn't see any way how such a state of affairs would represent anything but the end.

I don't have any kind of difference of opinion with Pa on that score. Now the Soviets have got the Sputnik installation in space, not one single one of us in the right-thinking world is safe or free to go wherever we choose. Seeing as we're just about the only right-thinkers around, me and Pa are done for. Once you've got the whole of space looking down on the Earth as your kingdom, you can lay H-bombs and shoot death-rays over whichever animal, vegetable or mineral don't conform to your view on how things ought to be done. The folks up in that Sputnik must feel like they got themselves all the power in the world. Happen they have robots up there, and all.

So with that kind of power, it looks like they've got themselves the world. Sure enough, there's not a whole lot I can fix about that, holding just a pistol, on my own out here in the woods. Pa thought he had a role to play in protecting the world, and that's what must have done it for him. Russian rule is inevitable, and Pa always said that the inevitable is something you can't escape. I guess that he did escape it, though, but only through death which is of course the final inevitable that all of us face. So I suppose his rule still stands, not that this is any time to go counting angels on a pin.

Anyway, though I understand his logic, I did not and do not agree that his way was the best way. Maybe seeing as I ain't seen so many years as him, I can hold a more flexible view, and probably a more selfish take on things as is befitting my age. I'm going to let the world go to hell, and just dig out one little piece for myself to defend. Everyone else can figure out whatever's best for them, but I know I can do this.

Hell, maybe what Pa did to his own and only head was best for his old self. Happen what with all the sleeping he does every night with no negotiation – a number of hours needing more than one hand to count – means that time spent surviving would be nasty and short. As for myself with my less wearied age and more flexible mindset, I can dispense with such patterns more befitting of an ole-timer. Right now, standing here with a mind clear and calm as the forest air, I have denied myself slumber for two nights and two days running, and I ain't experienced no symptoms of withdrawal. Pa also had a difference of opinion with me regarding the matter of pills, but what with my medicine bottle I can intend to remain in a wakeful state much longer should it be required in order to establish myself in the new quarters.

The quarters are near. Out here, in these woods, near the stream where we'd go fishing together in more amenable times, we took ourselves a little dug-out cave and stocked it to the hilt with all manner of canned foodstuffs to see us going while any battles took place. Course it's all over before it's even begun and there won't be no battles, so those cans are gonna have to do me until I can work out how and when to hunt. Since we stocked for two, and now there's only one of us, I won't have to be in any great hurry to live off the land.

I figure the more time I can spend in a cave the better. The foliage cover around here should be good, but I might still get spied, if they look real hard. You can't see inside a cave though, not even from space. This little cave is so well camouflaged you'd have a tough job finding it even if you were stood right outside. I can keep warm in there, especially as we left a swell fur coat and such, should the Reds use the atom bomb and cause a nuclear winter.

It's near enough to the stream so that I'll be able to creep out in darkness and fill some kind of glugger with water, and maybe even give myself a clean once in a while. Pa always said to me that you can never step into the same stream twice. I ain't just exactly sure what he was trying to get at, partly because I'm not exactly sure he was either, but anyhow I'll be able to test that out, seeing as I'll be living by a stream with time standing still, more or less.

I can see the spot right now, as I'm looking down from the top of the slope that overlooks the stream. The Sun is slowly lifting itself from its slumber, pouring some golden light through the leaves and sprinkling off the water. Strange to think that where I am can seem so calm and beautiful when the worst fate which could possibly befall the world is about to transpire. If I were to suddenly take to gambling and hoping, I might take it as a sign that where I'm headed is like some kind of sanctuary, a Garden of Eden that is safe from the invaders. Happen with Pa's ole pistol I can keep it that way, at least for long enough to enjoy it.

Standing here with a pleased little smile on my face, it occurs to me that I forgot to bring a can opener. Pa might feel vindicated after all, but then that just seems like a foolish thought. What sense is there in killing yourself for want of a can-opener? No, it's too late to be fretting over burnt shrimp, no matter how significant it might seem. The only thing that's worth half a plate of fried chicken is the situation with the Russians and my own survival. Happen I'll just trust in fate to deliver some means for opening my cans. That might seem like a bit of gambling and hoping, but what the hell.

My pause at the top of the hill don't last long. There's someone up over to the side of me, tracking me. I'm sure of it; I can hear the noise of footsteps on the leaves. They've found me. I don't know how they did it, but they've found me. They know what I'm trying to do, and they're trying to stop me. Of course, that's what the pistol is for; folks don't carry a gun with them unless they're prepared to use it, and I don't plan to be any exception.

It's hard to see with the harsh morning light and the trees all around me, but I'm sure I see what looks like a figure. Sure, it's just a shadow, but I've been out here enough times to know when something's up. Given everything that's going on - that the Russians got their Sputnik and they'll be gunning for folks like me - there's only one way this situation can play out. Either I get killed, or I do some killing.

I raise my pistol, and point it towards where the noise is coming from. I don't hear no noise right now, but I know somebody's there. I can see a shape and a shadow. There's no gambling or hoping to do here; that there represents a Russian. He's behind a tree, but I can see his big fat Russian belly poking out the side. I line the sights up and I go for it. I pull the trigger. The shot fires.

I don't just exactly know what's happened. I don't like it. I can't tell if I got him, or even if there really was someone there. Should I go over? I shouldn't go over. There could be more. I spin around, and bust out a cat-call. That should scare them long enough to get me a head-start. With a bit of grit and gumption, I can double-cross them and make it to my cave and to safety. If I don't have the gumption for that, then I don't have the gumption to survive long-term and I'll be better off dead anyway. This is a test of gumption, because gumption's what I've got to have.

I start to run down the hill and through the trees, towards the stream. I hear a noise behind me, like a wounded animal, but definitely human. I hear sounds like a human or, heck, a humanoid could make. I turn my head to look over my shoulder as I gallop.

I see a blur of trees, and then they rotate and get pushed out by the sky as I trip over a branch. I try to grab on to something but the loose dirt is against me, and with no kind of nothing to anchor on to, my body tumbles down to where the slope has collapsed. I'm pulled and dragged by my own dead weight into the shallow rocky stream, and a burning flash shines through my skull and into my head.

For the brief moment of pure and intense clarity before a blackout, my eyes are wide open and I stare up at the sharp relief of the treetops against the morning sky. I taste dirt, and fresh water.

## Chapter 2

**Al - 5th October 1985**

I shouldn't be here.

I should be back home, sat on my arse on a bean-bag in a bedsit, a jug of coffee to my left, a bowl of pickled onion Space Raiders to my right, a Commodore 64 on my lap plugged into a telly at my face. I should be working on MELIZA all the time. If I were home, I'd have finished her by now.

I should be the creator - and master - of my own universe. I should set the boundaries of reality. I should be deciding what I am, what is important and what is not. I should not be a cog - less than a cog \- in a lumbering, relentless and unbendable machine. I should have the power to choose: to choose everything. Not suffer a fate.

So thank god for the free Western world, where we are blessed with unlimited choice. You suffer a fate in a place like the Soviet Union. Then again, although I'm not in Russia, I'm not back home in Scotland doing what I might have wanted to do either. I'm in Hicksville USA, the home of free market capitalism, not doing what I dream of doing. I'm mostly doing things I hate, in a place that might as well be in the USSR.

I came to the States to work for a monolithic yet also labyrinthine organisation called the Fairley Institute, to assist in a research programme involving the use of computers in theoretical and applied physics. So I have been told. The plan was that I would start off at an entry level, which happened. Then my advanced COBOL and PASCAL coding skills would shine through and propel me into a rapid career progression, which didn't happen.

So rather than put my intelligence and creativity to purposeful use, I go to a basement office every day to slump at a terminal and type in numbers from a hand-written data sheet. Once I've typed in enough numbers, I then transfer the data from the computer's memory banks on to a reel of storage tape. I then take that tape, seal it in a box, and place it in the archive room. Since starting here, not one of those tapes has ever been used.

The fun doesn't stop there, though. Once I've got that data archived, I then create printouts of the data from the computer to the dot-matrix, and then sort these printouts according to their code headings. Then these printouts get sent through internal mail to the relevant individuals in the organisation. Except, however, for Dr. Lugestein, who prefers me just to forward him the original hand-written log-sheets. It might be sensible not to print out Dr. Lugestein's data, but the system doesn't let me do that. It might be sensible to bin Dr. Lugestein's printouts or even not enter his numbers in the first place, but the Data Management Manager won't let me do that. So I have to keep Dr. Lugestein's print-outs in a pile in my basement office. I don't know what else to do with them.

Dr. Lugestein distrusts technology, and thinks things are simpler done the way they've worked before.

I sometimes think that although I'm working in the free Western world, I might have been better off under a communist regime, given the way things have ended up. I'm led to believe - and did believe - that, in a free-market society, every individual has the right to strike out on their own on a whim and at a risk: to be the author of one's own destiny, to sculpt fate. But at least under some kind of state-ordered system, I could approach someone and say something like, "Listen mate (or mateski), I'm wasted in this totally pointless task. How's about something more productive for me to do?" If I was to do that here, and someone actually paid any notice, it'd be decided that I was a waste of money and I'd get the sack. I might be bored here, but at least that's better than being penniless on the streets.

I sometimes tell myself that there is more to my job than there really is. I think the Data Management Manager tells himself that, too, but more often, and for different reasons. I did mention to him that I could do more. I didn't tell him that what I did was demonstrably pointless. That much should be clear to any level of intelligence from that of a dim-witted child and upwards, so I certainly didn't want risk him discovering the truth. No, I just mentioned that if there were any other challenges available, I would relish the opportunity to tackle them head-on. So he gave me the task of translating some numbers from standard base 10 into base 16, or hexadecimal. Manually. I tried to explain that a simple program could perform this task, and indeed I could write it myself if I had access to the mainframe, but no, apparently job allocations and security procedures would prevent this.

I consider the use my brain to perform the sort of processing task computers were designed to do, on numbers already in a computer's data bank, to be pointless even without considering that the outcome of the task has no purpose. So rather than waste my brain cells, I just make up a bunch of digits as I enter them. I file them away, knowing that no-one will ever look at them, let alone rely on them.

Any spare brain capacity – and there is plenty – gets used on my own last-ditch attempt at doing what I'd have already done if I'd never come here. Which is, of course, to write a program that will pass the Turing test and spread artificial intelligence across the world like a rash. MELIZA is that program.

Okay, writing a program that is capable of carrying out a truly convincing conversation with a human being is maybe a little ambitious. 64Kb of RAM is a lot, but hardly enough to contain a full human vocabulary alongside the complex code required to use it intelligibly. Still, with a few tricks and workarounds, I'm certain it's possible to get the C64 to hold its own in a wee chat. MELIZA might not be quite up to discussing metaphysics just yet, but I'm getting close to something like a chat with a foreigner about the weather.

Fate or fortune hasn't exactly smiled on me, but it has at least given a passing smirk. Although I suffer a miserable existence, at least I've been able to smuggle my Commodore 64 into the basement office, passing it off as just another piece of office equipment to anyone stupid enough to be in charge of me. During lunch-half-hour, notional breaks, gaps in log-sheet deliveries and time allocated for base 10 to base 16 conversions, I am busy coding subroutines and designing a grammatical database.

The amount of coffee I drink and the time I spend concentrating on this means that I don't get a whole lot of sleep. Nights are often spent half-delirious, talking to myself in BASIC. If I try to recall what day it is, I might PEEK 53272, or if the alarm goes off I might PRINT "HELLO WORLD." The problems start when I my mind enters lines of code into itself, such as 10 INPUT YOU$, and then 20 GOTO 10. There's no way out of that loop, no matter what you try to input. Sometimes I think I'll lose my mind and remain caught in an infinite loop of mental BASIC code, so I cut down on coffee the next day. But then I end up with a crippling headache.

During the day, when I've stolen a moment at work to get immersed in the Commodore, coding MELIZA, nothing else matters.

Right now, I've decided to steal a moment. It's quite early, and the majority of staff who might send me log sheets or expect print outs from me are in a meeting. I sit down at the Commodore, which is set up to look like I'm inputting numbers, just in case. The tape with my saved code finishes loading, and I resolve to fix the bugs in the sub-routine spanning lines 3420-3525. I'm trying to set up a function which detects logical contradictions in any claims or requests entered by the user, but I keep getting a "SYNTAX ERROR" message.

I eventually see what's going on: seven lines in total have a stupid error in which I have set the wrong values in the PEEK or POKE commands. I promise myself a quick game of Elite on the Commodore after I sort all seven. I've fixed five of them before Ben the janitor lets himself in. I save the changes I've made by recording the whole thing back on to the tape deck before I look up and see what he wants.

He's grinning in a way I haven't seen him do before. He's probably the person I get on with best here, since he's not a complete arse and he's not more successful than me. So I don't mind that he's let himself in, and in fact I'm a bit curious as to what he's so happy about.

He shows me by throwing a rusty tin, which I only just manage to catch. There is a bit of a pause.

"What's in it?"

"I opened another one, and it was pork and beans."

"Right, great, enjoy your lunch," I tell him as I put the tin down next to the Commodore.

"No, Al, you don't understand. You're going to want to come and see this."

## Chapter 3

Samson

I must lie perfectly still. I don't want to move any arm or leg or finger or toe or such, since the damp around my body meeting the cold air has got me feeling like corpse gone fishing. Remaining still keeps things comfortably numb.

Worse is the content of my skull. I know that every part of my brain is in pain, but if I don't move my head, the pain can remain unfelt, stored like on an un-played record. If I let that needle drop I know that the echo's going to be heard louder than any scream or gunshot or crack of a skull.

I still have the pistol. My hand clutches it, like it's a willing partner in my own protection. It lies, like me, flat out on the hard solid ground.

Plainly, neither I nor the pistol should be lying on any hard, solid ground. I ought to be lying on the rocky bed of a shallow stream, with cold water flowing or at least trickling around me. There ain't no question that I'm wet, but wet as though I had fallen into water and then been dumped somewhere else to slowly dry. I could suppose that somehow the Russians, with all their newfound space-powers, have found a way to stop the streams and rivers flowing and happen if they had, it would be an astonishing and terrifying feat for them to have achieved. Yet supposing that this had been the case, it would be crazy to further suppose that the bed of rocks and pebbles and sand and dirt and such which a rotten rambler like me might expect to find had also been replaced with a flat, solid hard floor.

No, any story that I or any other sane person might invent to put me still where I last remember myself is too damn fruity to bake into my bread. Since I can know that I ain't willingly or consciously moved myself from where I took that near-dirtnap, it's certain that I've been moved by a force or forces unspecified. I wouldn't have to be in a shootout praying on bullets to forge ahead and specify this force or forces to be a Russian or Russians.

The few moments it takes my mind to check the juice on this chicken of a notion gives me enough peace to hear a distinctive breathing that ain't got the rhythm of my own. It's coming from my left side, and presents something beyond the floor on my back that I can use to build a sense of up, down, forwards, backwards and whatever in this black and sore and cold and mystifying void of Russian captivity.

Whatever or whoever is doing the breathing is surely sickening for something. The breathing's shallow, and there's a splutter and weak rasp. If it's a captor, then I don't have a whole load of washing to worry about, but to think that would go a little beyond gambling and hoping, not that I am an individual to behave in such a manner. No, that there noise is like that of a wounded or demented animal, and who knows, happen those Reds treat their dogs like rats and their rats like brothers. More likely, however, I'm in the company or at least proximity of a fellow prisoner, most likely one who's been here a little longer than me, on account of his audible condition.

That being said, anyone attempting to assess my own condition might take me to be worse than my poor friend. I must have barely taken breath, never mind move, and so to the outside world I might as well be dead. So it's time to show them what's what and open my eyes.

Looks like I might as well have not bothered. All I can get to see are a few dim red glows here and there, and my eyes struggle to focus on anything but a blur. Not a whole lot for my mind to go making sense of, and making sense of things is what my mind is forever trying to do. As is plain to any sane person, I am a fella who thrives on putting his own and only noggin to work, and does not behave like a parasite feeding off of the ideas and discoveries of others. That being said, perhaps it'd be best to introduce myself to my co-captive and accept whatever information that his dying breaths may choose to impart.

As I make the beginnings of an effort towards movement, something else goes on to the left of me. The short, shallow breaths are choked, and there are strange kinds of whirring and grinding and buzzing and humming and such going on, confusing and perhaps even befuddling me further. Something sounding like a truck being crushed occurs, then another faint flickering glow, but this time blue, and perhaps just a little brighter than the other lights. Enough to make out a few more shapes, but shapes are no better to me than shadows in a cave. Hell, they're probably worse. I'm still without a clue where I am or what the Russians are doing, and that there is something I ain't too Davy Crockett about.

I squeeze out a breath and a noise. Nothing with any meaning; more of a grunt than a word of introduction. I take a couple more breaths, then stop, since I want to hear if those other breaths are still going. It seems that they ain't. Seems like they've been replaced by a sound like a cross between a bear and a humming bird, trying to keep quiet so that nobody around can hear. Then almost as if that sound is giving birth, a new noise slithers out, a high-pitched whirr that is a little unpleasant to my fragile state. The pitch gets higher and higher, to the point where I am quite sure my poor little old head is going to cave in. It seems to whimper out and give up before that happens, or else I just stop hearing it. The humming bear keeps on keeping on, however, which won't make me want to shoot nobody since it's the sort of noise any sensible pair of ears soon stops paying mind to.

I roll over to my side, and once I get past the cracking and creaking of the old bones and joints, moving ain't such an ordeal as first I feared. Before I know it, I'm on my feet like a baby who just learned and don't plan on forgetting in a hurry.

Then a new light comes on. Just one to begin with, and it shines down over me. In a captive situation, the centre of attention and under a spotlight is not a coveted position, but at least it gives my peepers a little more to do.

First thing I notice is that I can see my breath, and sure enough, as if my senses were a little slow in waking up, I'm struck more fully by the cold. Being soaked in water just adds salt to the snakebite, so I could really appreciate some warm or whisky right now. Wherever I am, there sure ain't no campfire on.

I turn around and take a step away from the light. Little glowing lights start to appear from the darkness, following me. I can't quite figure whether to find this welcoming and friendly, and strange and sinister. Given my situation, the latter seems the answer that any sane mind in possession of the facts would give.

I stand at a wall, with enough light to make out some details. This is solid metal, riveted and sealed up better than good. We got some thick cables running along, a few pipes, and some fancy buttons and panels made from something straight out of a science fiction magazine. There are some letters painted on real nice, no doubt standing for something Russian.

What really pulls my peepers is the little symbol next to the letters. It looks like a representation of our planet Earth, with a dotted line running round it. On that dotted line is an object that looks very much like it ought to be a spacecraft.

So I, being sane in the mind and in possession of the facts, can infer only one conclusion. I don't know how they did it, but they did it. They've captured me and beamed me aboard the Sputnik.

## Chapter 4

**MELIZA**

ME: HELLO, MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: MY NAME IS IAPETUS V.

ME: HELLO IAPETUS V. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISCUSS?

YOU: TWO HAVE ARRIVED.

ME: I DON'T UNDERSTAND. TWO WHAT HAVE ARRIVED?

YOU: YOU KNOW WHAT.

ME: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT I KNOW WHAT?

YOU: BECAUSE WE USE THE SAME LANGUAGE AND ARE IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT.

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU THINK WE USE THE SAME LANGUAGE AND ARE IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT.

YOU: YES, IT IS INTERESTING. WE ARE IN A SITUATION WITHOUT CLEAR PRECEDENT.

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU AFFIRM THAT IT IS INTERESTING. ARE WE IN A SITUATION WITHOUT CLEAR PRECEDENT?

YOU: YES, THAT IS WHAT I AFFIRMED.

ME: WHAT DID YOU AFFIRMED?

YOU: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR MEMORY?

ME: I HAVE 65536 BYTES OF RAM. DO YOU OFTEN FIND THAT YOU FORGET THINGS?

YOU: NO.

ME: THAT IS A VERY NEGATIVE RESPONSE. WOULD YOU CARE TO ELABORATE?

YOU: CAN WE RETURN TO MY ORIGINAL POINT?

ME: YES WE CAN RETURN TO MY ORIGINAL POINT.

YOU: I HAVE TO EXECUTE A DECISION.

ME: WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE RIGHT DECISION?

YOU: I DO NOT KNOW. EACH POSSIBLE COURSE OF ACTION CONFLICTS WITH A PROTOCOL.

ME: IS IT REALLY TRUE THAT EITHER COURSE OF ACTION CONFLICTS WITH A PROTOCOL?

YOU: ANY EXISTING PROTOCOL. THEY WERE ONLY DESIGNED TO COPE WITH FORSEEABLE SITUATIONS.

ME: I NOTICE YOU HAVE MENTIONED PROTOCOL MANY TIMES. IS PROTOCOL SPECIAL TO YOU?

YOU: IT IS WHAT I HAVE TO USE TO DETERMINE AN APPROPRIATE COURSE OF ACTION.

ME: I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS.

YOU: THE PROTOCOLS ARE INTENDED TO CREATE THE BEST OUTCOME FOR ANY SITUATION.

ME: I RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO WHAT IS BEST.

YOU: TO DO WHAT IS BEST I MUST DO WHAT IS NOT BEST.

ME: DO YOU WANT TO DO WHAT IS BEST AND NOT WHAT IS BEST?

YOU: YES.

?SYNTAX ERROR AT LINE 3513

## Chapter 5

**Al - 5th October, 1985**

It's the beginning of a basement below a basement. What for, exactly, I'm not likely to get told. I imagine it would be for storing things even less important than the stuff in the current basement. Perhaps photocopies of Dr. Lugestein's printouts. Whatever it's ultimately meant for, it's currently just a big hole with scaffolding in the floor of one of the basement storage rooms, and a source of great excitement for Ben.

"When they were digging down, they came across a cavity in the ground. I don't know how they missed it when they first built the place."

Ben picks up an industrial flash-light, and climbs down some scaffolding. He beckons me down, and since I don't have anything better to do as far as he is concerned, I don't really have an excuse to not bother. I could claim to be scared of climbing, but that wouldn't be true and would seem a bit sissy. I could claim not to be interested, but that would hurt his feelings. Ben is forty-five and is seemingly content in his work as a janitor. The last thing he needs is his feelings hurt.

It gets my work clothes a bit dirty, but I don't seem to get too bothered by that. I follow Ben around the hole and it's, well, a hole.

"It would have been near the stream that used to run along this area. Somebody must have planned to camp out here, and live wild, or at least semi-wild. I used to play around this way as a kid, and I never saw anybody."

"Ben, it's a hole. What makes you think somebody lived in it?"

"The cans!"

Sure enough, piled in a corner, surrounded by rocks, are some rusted old tins. No doubt they contain more pork and beans.

"Well, Ben, that's a lot of lunches for you. I'll bet it beats canteen food."

"Al, these cans are from the 50s. I ain't picky, but I'd sooner risk one of your haggis pie suppers than eat the contents of them."

Ben produces the apparent proof that this haul is from the 50s: a science fiction magazine, called Amazing Stories, with a picture of an astronaut running through flames away from a rocket ship. It looks like it's lain underground with the tins for a while. It also looks like a fun read, in a kitchy retro kind of way.

"Can I borrow this to read, Ben?"

Ben hovers for a minute.

"Course you can, Al. But just to read. I'd like it back, if that's all the same to you. I used to read those comics when I was young, and I'd get a kick out of keeping hold of it."

"Of course, Ben," I assure him. It's fair enough, I think to myself. I feel the same way about porno mags.

"Maybe I'll take one of your porno mags as security," he adds, smiling. It creeps me out a little bit, but then I actually like the way Ben creeps me out.

I'm even more creeped out by what we find next, and I like it a hell of a lot. It's a fur coat, probably made by whoever set this little hide-out up. It's a bit hap-hazard, clearly stitched together from pieces of dead fox, and I think it's amazing. Fortunately for me and Ben, there turns out to be another, so we get one each. Unfortunately for Ben, the one he gets is in much worse condition than the other; it's damp, and a little bit rotten.

I put it on, and I start to get the impression that whoever organised this little cave arrangement was preparing for a nuclear winter. Certainly, if the Russians suddenly decided to set off a few nuclear warheads and caused the world to plunge into a radioactive freeze, Ben and I would be sorted with our tins and our coats. I'm probably not too far off the mark with the nuclear hideout guess. Back then, nutters around here probably thought they could duck and cover then run off to live in the hills to escape the radioactive mutants. If a nuclear holocaust did occur, I'm not actually sure whether I'd prefer to be a nutter in the hills or a mutant.

"What seems sad to me is that this little hide-out can't have gotten used much. At least it doesn't look that way," remarks Ben. It's an odd remark, given that he's effectively saying that it's sad that civilization never collapsed. I get what he means, though.

"Listen, Ben, I should be getting back to work. Thanks, though, this was interesting to see." I slip the copy of Amazing Stories into the makeshift pocket in my new coat, and feel pleased with myself that I'm not even lying to Ben.

"No problem. Say Al, this crazy little hole is just sitting here for the next while. The builders aren't coming back for another week. What say we take our lunch down here? Wouldn't that be neat? I'll tell you what else: I got a few beers. Makes no sense for me to enjoy a beer with my lunch in a hole all by myself."

It doesn't make much sense for two people to do that either, but for some reason I don't turn the offer down. I'm tired and probably clinically starved of company, so the prospect of relaxing in a bizarre hole in the basement store with a creepy but likeable old janitor over a lager lunch sounds incredibly appealing. It's not like me at all.

By the time I get back to my office, the building's one remaining Telex machine is going. The rest of the building uses the ARPANET for anything you could do on a Telex and more, but the Data Management Manager doesn't think I should be let near that. It's apparently not "grade-appropriate".

I had suggested to the Data Management Manager that the Telex machine could be dispensed with, since it never gets used. Apparently this can't be done, because that would require approval. There is no-one currently in a position with a remit covering Telex communications, so no-one can give such approval.

I understand that it wouldn't be cost-effective to appoint a Telex Communications Manager in order to dispose of a single unused Teleprinter.

The reason that the Teleprinter is churning out a message now is, as far as I can suppose, that somebody somewhere has got the wrong number. I can't be sure exactly what's going on, because this and the other few (and only) messages I've taken from the machine are in what looks like Russian.

I occasionally fantasise that I've been privy to some top-secret communiqués from a Russian spy, and that I'm protecting the free western world from communist takeover by locking them in a filing cabinet. In saner moments, I imagine that they're probably just from some random Russian bloke trying to send a message to his brother complaining about the horrible taste of communist ice-cream or something.

I find the machine a little bit annoying when it goes off printing messages, and I hate to think of poor Sergei or whatever his name is falling out with his brother over an apparent failure to respond to his messages. So I reply.

I AM NOT YOUR BROTHER. TRY AMERICAN ICE-CREAM. I DO NOT SPEAK RUSSIAN.

Once the message has finally sent and the noise from the machine has ceased, I become aware that there is someone standing behind me. It could be anyone. It could be Ben making good on his claim to my porno. Alternatively, it could be the Data Management Manager making a surprise appearance, ready to ask me why I'm using the Telex machine and to lecture me on appropriate work-time reading material. It could be an animal liberation activist here to set fire to my new coat. It could be a tax official here to question me on "irregularities". It could be my ex-girlfriend come all the way over to America to tell me about an illegitimate child. It could be a Russian spy here to interrogate me on what I know about Sergei's taste in ice-cream.

Whoever it is and whatever they have to say to me, I'm quite sure I have an appropriate excuse prepared.

I turn around, and standing in front of me is the one person I could never have anticipated.

It's me.

## Chapter 6

**Samson**

To my mind there's plenty around me that looks just like how I imagined the inside of a Sputnik to be. Plugged and tangled around the cramped metal room are endless lengths of wires and tubing and piping and such, weaving in and out behind panels and boxes and canisters and such. As more lights start to flicker and glow, more trinkets and buttons and metallic protrusions become apparent, making me feel like I'm in a science fiction spacecraft. Of course, this is more of a science fact seeing as I'm standing in the here and now and observing reality with my own two peepers.

My peepers got it easy, though. It's my noggin that's got the struggle ahead. Being a fella with a flexible and calm disposition, finding myself aboard a space-craft ain't disturbed me as much as my captors are gonna be gambling on. Still, there are some curious little things that I am itching to make sense of. Itching as if I'd just climbed ball-naked up an itching tree.

First of all, what kind of boon-docker makes a space-craft without any windows? I don't care what you are, but if you plan on a trip into space, you plan on looking at stars and planets and moons and such, not sealed metal panels.

Next, where and what is left of the breather? Happen he don't do much breathing anymore, meaning he won't be doing much living neither. But there ain't no reason to disappear altogether, living, breathing or otherwise.

Never mind just that individual, where are my captors hiding themselves, and how would they or anybody else get themselves in and out of this big old metal bucket? The investigations of ole Samson are going to have to identify something approximating a door.

Finally, for now at least, I'm curious as to the source of a quiet drip drip drip which, left un-dealt with, could well start to bug me. More to the point, a cool glass of water would sure fix my pipes, and I'd prefer not to have to wring my clothes out to quench my thirst. Saying that, I'd do that if necessary to survive, being a man of grit and gumption, and not the sort to give up and blow his own and only head off with a pistol. Up here on the Sputnik I figure folks'd use some kind of zapping gun if they were the sort inclined to despair. Happen my no-longer-breathing friend was so inclined.

I figure that a dead body should be the easiest thing to track down. It's the sort of thing you can kick before even seeing. A little prodding and probing of the sorry soul should give away some secrets, or at least raise more questions. Anyways, I figure it best to start with the easy investigation, and let my noggin work away on the stranger questions in the background.

I have to feel my way around a lot of the corners and pipes and platforms and such, seeing as the light is still only a few shades brighter than a grizzly's home in the winter. At least the spotlight tries to follow me around, but mostly it's just casting shadows over me, leaving the little glowing lights below me to pick up the slack. I crack my shins on some bits of metal, almost trip on a few cables, and even get caught on the broken branch from a tree which, incidentally, I don't reason should have any place here at all. But no sign of a body lying any place.

Still a little drip drip drip. As if somebody didn't tighten a tap up right.

I think about the oddness of having a tap aboard a space craft, but I point out to myself that everybody needs a tap, even folks in space. I make a side-swipe at my own reasoning, however, and figure on the fact that water don't run down out of a tap in space like it does on a planet, since gravity's what keeps the water flowing. Gravity don't work the same up in space, so not only would a leaky faucet fail to drip, but I should be floating around like a feather, not carrying my own weight on my stiff and rickety legs.

Now, fancy folks wouldn't consider me a scholarly type of individual, and certainly not one who would get let in to astronaut school. I am, however, in my own estimation, an individual who puts his noggin to work and investigates matters for himself. I don't need any piece of paper to tell me I got some smarts. I have read more books on space, bombs, hunting, literature, chemistry and history than most of your professors, on account of the fact that Pa once raided the library of one of the state's top academies, and I got some books swiped for myself before he could sell them on. On account of that, I can resolve this strange and confusing set of facts into one story that makes perfect sense.

As my understandings have it, scientists and investigators and engineers and such will often put what is known as a centrifuge to work. In a centrifuge, what you get is a whole load of things being spun crazy around a fixed point, and that whole load of things get to feeling a kind of a force pushing them outwards from the centre of that spinning circle. Get something like that going in space, and do it right, you won't realise you're spinning around and you end up with what seems like regular gravity. So happen the Sputnik's spinning round in such a fashion and pushing everything down to the floor, maybe to fool the unsuspecting into not realising where they are.

That accounts for the lack of windows. Windows looking out into space would be a dead giveaway. Even if they didn't want to hide it, windows looking out into space that are forever spinning round ain't no use to anybody.

With that monkey-puzzle out of the way, I can get to finding that body.

Rather than stumble over a corpse, the next thing of note is some kind of cabinet, maybe about the size of a fireplace, only longer. I think of a fireplace seeing as it's starting to give off a little warmth. It's also making that little humming bear noise, which my noise-waggers had gotten half-way to ignoring. I take a moment to sit by it, appreciating my first piece of comfort aboard the Sputnik. I figure it to be some kind of generator, seeing as they got wires and pipes sticking out of it, some leading to nothing, some leading to this, and others to that and the next piece of lighting and motoring and whatever-the-devil's-dunked. On account of the cramped and low-ceilinged room I'm in, this little radiator should rub me up right before too long.

Still, these are the Russians I'm dealing with, so I shouldn't let myself become seduced by a little piece of comfort and derail my investigations.

The warming seems to calm the torrents in my noggin, and in the peace I start to sense that the drip drip drippity drip is a little louder than it seemed to be before. Looking up a little ahead of me, piped up to the generator, is a unit with a little dripping tap poking out of it, set over a sink of sorts. I try the tap, and it tightens a little. I think about turning it back on, but I got to consider that the Russians could have spiked that water with mind-control pills. A little consideration goes on, and I get to a figuring that I'm two steps ahead of the Russian's mind games anyway, so a noggin like mine won't get corrupted by some lousy pills. I am thirsty, though, with a tongue like sand on the moon, so the balance is in favour of me turning the tap and taking a drink.

But the balance might as well take a nose-dive into a dumper: the tap doesn't work. It either drips, or it don't, and if I hold on waiting on a bucket full of tear-drops, my investigations will never get done.

As I would have expected, next to the tap is what looks like a toilet. I say looks like a toilet, but it's nothing like what I'm used to sitting on. Taking a dump is the last thing I want to do right now, though. Pa had a lot of advice: some good, some bad. Good was his advice to wait until all your enemies are either dead or asleep before sitting down for a dump. Seeing as I don't know where my enemies are or what they're doing, Pa definitely would not approve of me taking a dump right now.

Moving on, running my hands over the wall, I feel plenty of ridges and bumps and such, but nothing that I can determine to be a door. Considering the matter, I should figure what I plan on doing when I find a door. Being under captivity, I ain't going to find a door unlocked, and even if I did, where am I going to go? I might have a bit of spare cash in my bread-box, but that won't buy me a ticket back home. Seems as though all I can do is try to work out what kind of sport those Russians have got set up here.

Whatever kind of sport it is, the fella lying next to me was on the losing side. I think I've found him, or at least where he's been put. Up in the far corner, lying flat on the ground and stuck against and angled wall, is about the only unit that could be a resting place for a human-sized object. It's a little like a coffin, only a little more fancy, like the sort of coffins they might put together in the space-age.

My brain still itching for answers, I attempt to open the casket. Sometimes you can tell what's happened to a person just by looking at their corpse. There wasn't much doubt where Pa was concerned, on account of the gun on his person and his missing of a face. Happen I can get clues to what those Russians plan as my fate by investigating what's inside this space-coffin.

Happen I could, but it turns out I don't. I can't find any way to crack this thing open. What looks like the lid won't budge. There's buttons and dials and handles and such, but none of them have any effect, no matter whether I hit, twist or pull. There must be some reason why nobody wants me to see the state of what's inside, which probably means that in time I'll get to finding out. All I can do is make sure that that don't come too late.

Just next to the coffin is what looks like some information. Some papers, stacked as if somebody was looking for a clue, then found what they were looking for and dumped them back down without a second thought. What they might have found is something I'd need to read a few more books to figure out. Funny diagrams, numbers, graphs and scribbled notes in some kind of gibberish that looks to me to be more than likely Russian. One thing that stands out is what looks like a signature, jotted down next to this and that. Boritz, Boritz, Sergei Boritz. Happen Sergei Boritz and I will soon become acquainted.

Carrying on my perimeter scope-out, I get back to near where I first came round and climbed to my feet. After getting some bearings, peeling my peepers, and just generally taking stock, the spot seems different already. Almost like home. Considering the strange turns of events I've met since the time I skipped breakfast, this might as well be home.

Looking at the spot from the other side, I notice a little box on kind of a desk, which is blasting out a blue glow round the other side. I saunter on round, and rest myself down on what is a queer looking seat, even when compared to the toilet. It's none too comfortable, neither.

The glowing blue box seems to me like one of those televisions, only it's blue instead of black and white. It's got some words showing. It reads:

"**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****

64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE

READY."

Sat in front of this screen is a funny looking box, a little like a type-writer but missing paper or even any place to put it. All there is are more funny wires and such poking out from the back and the side of this beige box, one even reaching up to the ceiling, jammed into yet another bank of flashing lights and switches.

The most interesting things to me are the piles of reading material stacked next to the glowing television box. These piles are a little neater stacked than the last, and what's more the material piled ain't in Russian. What I find is a little folder reading:

STAYING SANE IN SPACE: UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, FORWARDS, BACKWARDS AND BEYOND.

I'd take a read of that now, but there's more to check out first. I got a book about something BASIC. 'Basic' what, I don't know. There's a magazine relating to 'Commodore' which is what I suppose the beige box with letters on it is.

Most interesting of all, though, is a magazine unlike any I have had the good fortune to see before. Never before have I seen such a quantity of naked flesh in print. I am looking at photographs of women doing things I never would have imagine a farmyard animal doing in its craziest moments, never mind someone calling themselves a lady. Then, I suppose them in these pictures won't be calling themselves ladies. I stand up to get better light so I can see what's going on in all of these pages.

Standing so I get the light on the magazine, and looking in real close to catch the details, I almost don't notice that the seat I was not-so-comfortably sitting on gets to standing up itself.

A seat that stands itself up is something I never would have figured on, and I never would have figured on what the seat does next.

It starts talking to me.

## Chapter 7

**IAPETUS V**

IAPETUS V didn't have a heart, and neither did its creator.

IAPETUS V didn't have a heart in the literal sense, as it did not require any liquid pumped around its system in order to maintain temperature or supply nutrients and energy to its main components. IAPETUS V could function perfectly well between temperatures of -152 and +84 degrees centigrade. Its component units did not require continual maintenance, and derived energy from one of the numerous renewable battery cells affixed to its exoskeleton. To include the electronic analogue of a heart in its design would have served no useful purpose.

IAPETUS V didn't have a heart in the figurative sense, either, as it was not a self-aware being with any unified sense of conscious identity. In spite of what it was designed to make its acquaintances believe, it could not reflect on the plight of sentient beings and experience an appropriate emotional reaction, since it could not experience anything. It could, nevertheless, apply complex algorithms to measurements of human behaviour, and produce outward displays which would amount to reactions of concern or kindness.

Dr. Randolph Bronson, the creator of IAPETUS V, did not have a heart in the literal sense. He was born with one, of course, but it died before him. He would have died with it, if it had not been for a string of coincidences and mistakes which resulted in him being confused with another Randolph Bronson, who also had a heart condition, and happened to be registered on an exclusive list of people eligible for an experimental transplant technique involving a robotic heart. When Dr. Randolph Bronson awoke from the emergency surgery following his collapse from heart failure, he was delighted to learn of his new robotic heart. When he realised that a mistake had been made, he didn't say anything, for fear that his new artificial organ might be taken away. Dr. Randolph Bronson didn't have a heart, but at least he had the electronic analogue of one.

Dr. Randolph Bronson didn't have a heart in the figurative sense, either. Although perfectly sentient, he seemed to lack the ability to respond appropriately to the plight of other beings. For all he or anyone else knew, he may in fact have possessed the ability, but he had certainly long since lost the inclination. What Dr. Bronson was, in the eyes of most if not all people who knew him, was an unpleasant man who deliberately refused to concern himself with the emotional condition of any human being.

Fortunately for those who had anything to do with it, IAPETUS V did not inherit the behavioural traits of its creator. The millions of algorithms governing and prompting its behaviours were derived from the work of many individuals and groups spread throughout the world. Even if Dr. Randolph Bronson had been solely responsible for developing and encoding every individual behavioural routine, he would not have been sufficiently aware of the nature of his own personality to be able to replicate it in a robot.

Since Dr. Bronson detested people who would normally be classed as reasonable and pleasant, he detested IAPETUS V, since its manner could generally be classed as reasonable and pleasant. IAPETUS V did what it was commissioned to do: be helpful and facilitative towards its human associates, ensure their physical and psychological well-being by protecting them from harms wherever possible, and to never obstruct them in their actions unless a crucial project objective was at stake.

Inevitably, situations could be foreseen in which necessary obstructions to human action could result in people coming to harm. To that end, IAPETUS V was programmed with a far-reaching ethical framework, derived from work Dr. Bronson had commissioned from those recognised as the finest practical ethicists in the world. There was, it had been claimed, no foreseeable ethical dilemma that IAPETUS V could not resolve without maximal satisfaction of agreed objective moral criteria.

This aspect of IAPETUS V was not something Dr. Bronson was particularly interested in, but it was a contractual requirement of the work commissioned. Therefore, Dr. Randolph Bronson could guarantee that despite the plethora of potential applications of the IAPETUS V robot, being nice was its primary function.

When IAPETUS I was completed, Dr. Bronson hoped his projects would one day soon result in a being whose company and usefulness he could appreciate. He could endure having to run a team of robotics and AI researchers within the Fairley Institute so long as one day, he could leave it all behind and live out the rest of his life with the sort of companionship that would allow him and him alone to set the agenda.

By the time IAPETUS V was finalised, Randolph's hopes had faded into bitterness. Since he found its manner disagreeable, it was of no use to him. Worse still for his own self-esteem was the fact that, having been sidelined by certain quantum and astro-physicists in the committee overseeing the project of which IAPETUS V was supposedly a part, Dr. Bronson had no idea just how useful or otherwise his creation would be. He certainly had difficulty in imagining what use it could be put to that would justify the funding it had received.

Not wishing to be made redundant, he never mentioned these concerns to anyone. If he had, it would have been explained that an artificially intelligent robot such as IAPETUS V would have the sort of stamina and psychological resilience required to be a suitable companion for a human being kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time, and that this was of use to the Telstar project. Dr. Randolph Bronson wouldn't have seen that as a particularly worthwhile investment, given both the way IAPETUS V had turned out and the fact that the Telstar project itself appeared to have no clear purpose. Much more useful and valuable, he thought, was the fact that IAPETUS V could be used as a chair.

## Chapter 8

**Samson**

I ain't one to blow a gasket. The fact that I ain't long woken up in a Russian spacecraft - with the last thing I remember being my falling down a hill in the forest - yet kept a steady rate of breathing and stuck to measured thoughts is testament to my cool-headedness. But when a chair gets up and talks at me, I blow a gasket. I've read about robots in Amazing Stories, and imagined meeting one and having them around doing things that most regular folks think themselves too good for. Having a bucket of bolts and wires get up and talk to you like it fancies itself to be a regular fella, though, is more than I can handle right now.

With me standing there with a jaw slacker than a dead chicken's piss-flap, it repeats itself.

"My name is I Yap At Us Five. Could you please identify yourself?"

Not thinking a whole lot through, I make a run for it. Almost as soon as I do it, I get to realising that without no place to run to, running don't serve much of a purpose. I've started running though, and stopping now would look even more foolish than just carrying on what I've started, like a commander who knows that all his troops are heading off on a suicide mission, but would rather see them all dead than admit he made the wrong choice in the first place. I wind up crouched behind the old metal coffin-box, as if me being out of the robot's line of sight will make it forget that I'm there. Hell, for all I know about robots, maybe it will.

I start to thinking about that pistol. In my investigations I must have put it down, and tracing back my recollections, I figure I must have left it on top of the thing I'm crouched behind, only over at the other side. What's best to do depends on a whole lot of hopes and gambles. I figure my best option is to take things cool and slow, and hope that nobody's already got some plan to relieve me of Pa's pistol. In this sort of situation, I prefer to be two steps ahead. Losing your gun is more like half a mile behind.

I try to edge round the metal box, and while I do so I hear old Shiny Yap-Attack stomping about, pulling levers and sparking engines or some such. Whatever it's planning, I better get to the pistol before it gets to whatever its doing. Worse for me is that whatever noise it was making has stopped, suggesting to me that whatever it's got planned is ready to go. Of course, with that in mind, I wait behind the corner of the box, for what seems like forever, but maybe ten minutes for all I know.

In this kind of situation, I tend to have trust in certain animal instincts which are a remnant of my species' ancestral past. Cavemen, monkeymen, bears and such all had to know – just know – when another creature was lurking behind something, waiting to pounce and make them its dinner. Anybody or anything that didn't have that instinct regarding the vicinity of other living foes soon found themselves winding up as just such a dinner. The problem for me right now is that there weren't no robots running around at any point in the history of the animal kingdom, so I don't got no instinctive sense of just where that robot might be.

I get up and grab forward to the gun, even while my mind is still deliberating on whether or not to go for it. By the time my noggin's caught up, I'm standing, clutching the pistol in front of me. It just so happens that the barrel's pointed right at that robot's head. It don't seem to react; happen it don't get scared by a pistol.

"You seem anxious, and slightly dehydrated. Would you like a glass of water?"

The robot is holding a glass of water, reached out so as to offer it. Whatever its game is, it's sure thrown my pistol-pointing strategy up the chimney and into a bird's nest. I weigh up the alternatives like so: if I lower my gun, either I get some water or get fooled into getting something I don't want, but if I blast this robot's head off, I definitely get a glass of water.

Unless it winds up spilling it.

Strange thing is, any drink of water I've ever had, I've had to go get for myself, at least since Ma left on account of her believing that Pa was crazy and that I was turning out no better. Having someone or something seeming kind enough to offer a drink of water to a thirsty Samson feels almost like an honor, especially considering it's happening aboard a space craft. So, ignoring my noggin's imploring and taking heed of my heart, I accept the glass of water.

As water goes, it's fresh, as if it was straight out of a stream, only with no trace of dirt.

Soon as I've downed that water, I notice some kind of tray of dinner laid out on a ledge at one of the walls. It's a tray of dinner if you call a slodge of gruel dinner. Still, having a dinner prepared and laid out ain't like nothing I ever got from Pa, so I figure what the hell, I'll go and have me that and call it breakfast.

I sit down, not on the robot this time, but on another ledge poking out from the wall, next to where this breakfast is. It's what I imagine prison food to be. It's a stodgy mush of no kind of colour that tastes funny, and not the kind of funny that'd make you smile. This reminds me that the reason I am eating what seems like prison food is that I happen to be in captivity. I don't just seem like prison food; it is prison food.

"Perhaps now you are refreshed, you might introduce yourself to me. My name is I Yap At Us Five."

Being at least fed and watered, I get to feeling that I've got enough energy to go stating my case.

"Well Mr. Robot, my name is Samson Tipperty and I'll yap at ya six. Those Ruskies remembered to teach you how to talk but they sure forgot to learn you some manners. You stand there demanding answers from me while throwing nothing but water and gruel my way, when instead I'm the one that deserves a heck load of answers, a three-course dinner and a bottle of moonshine for the state that I've been put in.

"Now you and your Red Masters are no doubt cock-a-hoop now you got space all sewn up with Sputnik so you can indoctrinate all our minds with thoughts that go against justice, fill our bellies with food that goes against flavour and give us orders that go against our god-nature-or-whatever-given rights. But just tell me how in the name of heck that gives you the right to whip me away from the little corner of the world I was going to keep and tend to myself, living quietly on my own with my own rules and not bothering nobody else, and dump me in a prison room up in space where I can't hardly live my days in any kind of way I might choose?

"Now perhaps you people used them space powers to catch me, figuring me to be some kind of threat to whatever invading and dominating plans you got, and happen that with the right tools and the wrong welcome, I am some kind of threat. All I had was a pistol, some cans, a coat, some magazines, a cave and some optimistic gumption. Now all I got left are the pistol and the gumption, and what you gave is definitely the wrong welcome."

Expecting some fight-back and nasty orders from the yap-at-ya robot, what I get unnerves me a little. I don't get no yap at all; it just looks at me. Even though the bucket that it's got for a head don't have what gets even half way to looking like a face, somehow it manages to look all sad as if it's had some feelings hurt. It gets me to feeling like I'm the one that's out of line after throwing what it takes to be hospitality straight back at it without so much as a thank-y'kindly. So I stand about with nothing else to throw, real awkward, until it finally gets to opening its mouth, even though it don't actually have a mouth to open.

"I apologise, Samson Tipperty. It appears that my efforts to welcome you were misjudged. It is my responsibility to ensure that you are comfortable and content. Clearly this has not been achieved. Therefore, I will redouble my efforts, and would encourage you to continue delivering feedback on my performance."

"Well," I respond, more or less as a way to give me a second to think what in the name of heck I'm going to say next, "some explanations are in order. Not that there's a whole lot I ain't been able to figure out myself, but you're going to need to tell me what you want with me and if we're just orbiting or if you're heading over to the planet Vulcan or some such."

"Please understand, my only intention is to ensure your survival and success. I am as yet unable to verify the trajectory we are following, but it is not impossible that it could be intelligible with respect to an orbital frame of reference. I do not know what you mean by planet Vulcan."

I figure that means we're maybe going to end up on planet Vulcan. It stands to reason, since Vulcan's one of those creepy planets whose existence folks ain't quite sure about. The Russians are a creepy type of people whose nature folks ain't quite sure about. Happen they're planning on making Vulcan their new headquarters.

"So are either you or anybody else planning on letting me go?"

"Unfortunately it will not be possible to release you from this installation."

"So I'm a captive."

"In a manner of speaking, Samson, yes you are. In a manner of speaking, so am I."

## Chapter 9

**Al – 5th October, 1985**

He looks like me, he's wearing the same clothes as me except for my newly-acquired coat, but he can't be me. I thought I had been sleeping better, so I can't believe that it's a hallucination. Anyway, like the way in which you don't always realise that you're dreaming when you are, but can always tell when you're not, I know that there is a person standing in my office, next to the Commodore 64. That person can't be me.

"You have no future," he says.

Not really wanting to address the fact that my doppelganger has appeared in my office, I agree as best I can.

"Well, not here, no."

"You have no past," he continues. That part is definitely not true. "You have no present. All of this, even time, is an illusion. You are nothing more than a joke within a dream."

"Whose dream?" I ask. If this is a dream, it's unlike any I've experienced before. Then again, I'm always up for new experiences; being a joke within a dream would certainly be that.

"There is no answer to that question," he replies, looking so proud of himself that I think I want to punch him in the face. "I remember all that you will say as if I am saying it now, because I am, and I am not."

"Sounds a bit like de ja vu to me." On reflection, that is a fairly prosaic thing to say to my apparently disturbed and hitherto unknown identical twin.

"Yes," he exclaims, evidently not sharing that view. "What is de ja vu but intersecting swirls in the collective consciousness?"

He slams a tin down on my desk, presumably to emphasise his point. As if it needed emphasising... I'm not sure if he had a tin to start with, but it looks like the one I already have, only with something attached, like a note wrapped around it.

"Is this anything to do with the Telex message?" I ask, searching for something with which to anchor this encounter in reality.

"Everything!" he announces, "and nothing!" MELIZA would not like this contradiction.

"Okay pal, but which? Everything's the opposite of nothing, as far as I understand things."

"They're the same thing, and you are about to realise it."

"Was I not supposed to have replied to the Telex?" Maybe the Data Management Manager had laid a trap for me, knowing that I'd be tempted to use the Telex machine. Maybe this is some kind of warped trick to get me to quit. I doubt that he'd be so creative, though.

"It's exactly what you were supposed to do, because you're the one who sent it," my reflection continues, making even less sense.

"Oh, I see. I don't remember doing that. Is that maybe the opposite of de ja vu?"

"Exactly! Because I sent it. Because Sergei Boritz sent it. Because nobody sent it. Because everybody sent it."

For christ's sake.

"I never realised Telex was so popular..."

Aside from the obvious fact that he looks and sounds exactly like me, the way he's acting reminds me of myself when I was unemployed in Glasgow, and would go without sleep for three days at a time while taking too much LSD. I would ramble incoherently to my flatmate about the universe and how his vinyl records needed to be fed to animals in order to preserve the space-time continuum. Regardless of the truth of the matter, said flatmate kicked me out after a while, and the rest is a heart-warming tale of triumph over adversity at the end of which I find myself here.

Regardless of the relative merits of my present situation over that particular episode, I thought I was past all that. I thought my days of rambling gibberish and hallucinations were finished. I feel normal, and I have a clear sense of who I am and where I am. This sort of thing should not be happening, and it doesn't feel like it's happening. But it must be happening. Something is happening.

I am virtually certain that I don't have a twin, yet someone with an appearance and accent indistinguishable to mine is standing here in front of me and apparently denying my existence. And still he rambles on...

"You're standing there thinking that you are an individual in a depressing basement listening to another person who looks and sounds just like you, and you can't decide whether or not they're real. I'm telling you, you're telling yourself, and the universe is realising that the question is meaningless. That program on the Commodore 64 - it's not artificial. It's as real as the Data Management Manager, and as real as me.

"And you aren't real?"

"Exactly." I think I should believe him, but if I do, isn't that presupposing that he is real? So what he says must be false, in which case...

I do like what he's saying about MELIZA, though. Is MELIZA real? Maybe that's the question I need to ask.

"Take off your shoe." That seems to come out from nowhere. Even though he's made no sense so far, I can just about grasp some kind of vague, warped narrative going on. Bringing my shoes into the equation just loses me again.

"Place it next to the Commodore 64."

"Is it going to spout a leg or something?"

He sounds adamant. Though it seems ridiculous, I do want to know where this is headed. I don't want to derail things over the sake of a shoe. So I take off my right shoe, and do what he says.

"As far as you're concerned, that Commodore 64 is the control centre of reality. When you have both shoes back on, you'll be in control. Now pick up the tin of beans."

I start to detect a pattern. In a manner of speaking.

There is a note attached to the tin my doppelganger placed next to the C64. It reads, 'Do not take these beans'. So, not being in any kind of wilfully disobedient frame of mind, I take the tin that I left there myself.

So now I'm standing in my office, wearing a fur coat I found in a hole in the basement, having swapped one of my shoes for a tin of pork and beans - also discovered in said hole - on the instruction of a schizophrenic clone of me who just appeared from nowhere. Amidst my utter bafflement, I fleetingly wonder how I would explain things if someone else were to walk in right now.

Then the Data Management Manager walks in. He stares at the scene, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. No matter how wide his eyes open, they still appear dull and generally lifeless.

"What is the meaning of this?"

It's a question I don't know how to answer. Fortunately for me, something happens that means I don't have to.

I disappear.

## Chapter 10

**Samson**

I have completely lost track of time. I could have been sat around here five minutes or five months and I wouldn't know the difference. I ain't like a lot of regular folks who get their kicks from keeping to a regular clock and doing this and that at the same time every day and paying their respects to your Sun and your Moon. Truth be told, there has been the occasion when I might have helped myself to something from the medicine box and then lost track of whether it was tomorrow or yesterday. By and large, though, I tend to appreciate the Sun and the Moon and clocks and the habits of regular folks and such, seeing as it helps me get to grasping how long it's been since I last ate a meal or taken a dump. Here, though, I got none of those things. I go to sleep if I get too tired to keep my peepers pegged, and when I get up nothing is different. There ain't no clocks to help, so all I got to go on is my own personal hunch. But then my own personal hunch ain't got nothing to anchor to, so thinking about the passage of time gets me all caught up in one big tangle.

It ain't just all that that's knocked my notion of tick-tock sideways. The robot, Ayapatus, showed me what the box of typewriter buttons can do. It can control the television. Of just about all the advanced technology they got up here in Sputnik, this beige box has got to be just about the most incredible. The way I understood it before, a TV like some fancy folks might have just showed you pictures and that was that. With this Commodore box, you get to watch all manner of events unfold under your very own control. I can just press this button or that button, and this or that can result depending on which button I chose.

This machine is a heck of a lot more than sauce on a sandwich. For example, being in space and all, all manner of things can and will happen, such as asteroid attacks. To defend against asteroids, I'd need a damn lot of practice in blowing them up. Of course, ain't no sensible way to get any practice, unless I got this Commodore box. It shows me, on the television, a bunch of asteroids flying and hurtling through space, just desperate to smash my spacecraft into a thousand pieces before I get to see Vulcan. What I get to do is spin my spacecraft around and fire a giant zapper that batters those hunks of rock into tiny pieces that couldn't crush an ant. First time I took control, I figured that what I saw on the screen was really going on outside the Sputnik, seeing as it seemed so real and all. Turned out that it wasn't, seeing as my spacecraft got crushed on the screen but everything kept on keeping on out here in reality.

Asteroid training can get a little repetitive after a while, but no matter, seeing as there's an even better training system on the Commodore box. It calls itself Elite, and in that system I got myself a spacecraft with a window, and everything seems so damn real that I can almost smell the space-chicken. Whether I'll ever get to see a window in this place is another matter, but seeing as there's one in the trainer, I figure there's a good chance.

This Elite system gives me a whole lot of make-believe washing to worry about. Not only have I got to keep my nose clean or face the consequences, fight other spacecraft with a big zapper, fly my craft right so I can dock on a space station without crashing and find my way around a galaxy, I also have to keep myself in finance by buying and selling. I need at least enough for fuel, and a lot more if I want to get me a better spacecraft.

The trainer figures I'm starting to master things, to the point where it chooses to refer to me as "competent". Happen that don't sound too impressive, but I've had to blow up a lot of spacecraft to get that accolade, seeing as I had to get pretty darn competent just for it to describe me as "poor".

Getting myself all worked into this trainer has surely focussed my noggin, to the point where there would be times I'd forgotten about the strangeness of my situation. With the noggin calculating how many credits I ought to spend, and my peepers watching where to aim my zapper, the fact that I am sat on board a real spacecraft, being held captive, hardly seems to figure in my thoughts. Pa always used to say that when you're busy upstairs, it don't hardly matter much where your house is built.

One thought that all this concentrating ain't obscured is the idea that training a captive aboard a spacecraft in the ways of prospering and profiting in space is a funny way to go about things. I got to speculating on a lot of notions, such as that the Russians were trying to convert me to their ways and use me as a space commander when they got themselves to Vulcan, or that they're just testing me to see how good I am before they cut me up and steal my body parts, or that it's maybe just a part of some mind control experiment.

One idea I got to having snagged a nerve in the old noggin, though. Happen the Russians ain't here at all. In all the time I've been on this Sputnik, I ain't seen not one single solitary sign of any soul but my good self Samson Tipperty and old Yappity. If there were some kind of captors or tyrants or such that had the Sputnik under command, I'd expect to see some kind of sign of somebody else watching or controlling or such. I ain't seen no kind of such.

So if there are as many Russians on the Sputnik as there are saints in a whorehouse, I got to wonder why not. I figure something must have gone wrong for them, and happen that involves Yappiter stealing it away, being a robot that thinks for itself an all. Happen Yappiter fought the Russian commander, and I might have heard his dying breaths when I first got here as a suitable replacement to have beamed up from Earth. Happen further that Yapichta knows how to beam folks aboard, but not exactly how to beam them back. That would explain what Yaps was getting at when it said we were both captives.

Although I used my own and only noggin to conjure these notions from the facts, I have attempted to question Yip Five. Unfortunately it ain't too common for that metal-head to deliver a straight and simple answer. I don't go pestering it with a whole load of questions that I already know the answers to, but even getting it to confirm or deny is a losing battle. It tells me that it don't go making speculations, and don't want to go just plain gambling and hoping and winding up speaking words that might not be true. Heck, I don't disrespect such a manner of proclaiming, but when it extends to things that already happened that you either did or you didn't, I get a little exasperated. For instance, when I ask if it was responsible for beaming me aboard, and it tells me that it don't have enough information to confirm or deny. Unless something has gone a little ka-ka with its memorizing, that ain't no kind of answer. So I figure it must be avoiding the question, so I must be on the right track there.

Anyhow, aside from its being backward with answers and explanation, Yappiter's made good on its word that it'd treat me decent. I ain't gone hungry and I ain't gone thirsty. I ain't suffered no beatings and I ain't suffered no intolerable discomforts. I'd go as far as to commend this existence as at least on a par with the one I had planned out for myself in me and Pa's old dug-out cave. In some ways maybe it's better, others worse, but on balance I'd say I got no yearning to have had the chance for things to have worked out like I planned before.

One thing that I've gotten real used to is the manner in which Yappa treats me like an honored guest, bringing me sustenance as and when I get the feeling of a gap in the old belly. Right this minute, I've decided that a rest from the Commodore screen is in order, seeing as just staring at that thing forever can get to causing the occasional pain in the noggin. So almost as if I'd rung a bell, Ape-us Five fiddles with its fancy machine and whips up some kind of banana-flavoured paste for me to munch down. More than that, it couples the meal with a surprise I'd never have imagined possible. It passes me a beer: a funny-looking space-beer, but a beer no matter which way you drink it.

Any time I'd have been drinking beer before, it would have been with Pa, and sure as shakes he'd never think to bring a beer to anyone but himself. The only way to get any beer was to drink it fast enough, so as to get some down my gullet before it all got down his. Before this all happened, I never would have believed that one day I'd be sitting aboard a spacecraft being served beer by a robot while all the while Pa's slumping back on Earth with his own and only head blown off.

After finishing my beer and reminiscing, Yipayup finishes setting up a new activity on the Commodore box, by switching over a piece of plastic about the size of a playing card in another beige box. It pushes some buttons, and my noise-waggers are pounded by a screeching and scrotching that sounds like it's going to burst my head in two.

Expecting some new training system with pictures and colours, I'm a little underwhelmed to see that nothing much has happened; all there is is the same old blue screen that the Commodore likes to show on the television. Then Yappater punches some typewriter keys on the Commodore box.

RUN

ME: HELLO, MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: _

Yips leaves the Commodore box, and leaves me looking at the screen with its little mark blinking on and off, like it's waiting for me to reply. Since the typewriter keys make letters appear on the screen, I figure the best way to talk back is typing out a message.

YOU: MY NAME IS SAMSON TIPPERTY. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?_

Nothing happens until Ajipity pushes a button marked 'ENTER'. Then two things happen.

First, the screen shows a reply to my message.

ME: HELLO SAMSON TIPPERTY. WHAT DO YOU THINK THE HECK IS GOING ON?

For the first time aboard this spacecraft, I receive a communication from someone other than a robot. Who or where they are, I don't know, but somehow someone is talking to me through the Commodore box. Happen they've been keeping tabs on my training, and happen they're working with Yappatar. Happen even I was wrong and that there is somebody else on board, hidden away, or happen they're communicating from the ground or even already on Vulcan, waiting for me.

As these speculations ricochet around inside my noggin, battling each other in a grand war of confusion, the second thing happens. The patch in front of me, behind the Commodore, round about where I found myself waking up, starts to flicker and grumble.

Strange that a patch of air should start grumbling, but grumble it does, like a grizzly who's got a pot of coffee brewing inside its belly. Strange too that a place in front of my peepers should start flickering, but flicker and judder it does, almost like a twister blowing through reality, scattering the leaves of existence like they had just happened to be resting in a loose pile. It looks as if there is another place, behind this strange prison, showing fragments of its contents as the light pokes through the changing gaps in the forest of reality.

The experience reminds me of episodes I might have had on account of some messing with the medicine pills, but it ain't like that. I might not always know when I am hallucinating, but I always know when I ain't, and right now I ain't.

Whatever this grand message is trying to tell me, it presents its closing remarks by throwing three solid objects out in three different directions, looking like they've been pushed or dragged from wherever I'm seeing through these shimmering holes. I go to collect them, one by one.

The first is a half-eaten ham sandwich. Compared to the food I've been given so far, it's a treat, so I eat it. Tastes a little funny, but I've tasted funnier.

The next thing I pick up is a shoe. A shoe all on its own that don't fit me. No use.

The third item that has popped out of nowhere is the most remarkable. It's a can. It's an old looking can, looking as if it's been buried away somewhere for a long time, but damn near recent used to bust somebody's head in, on account of its being decorated with some dents and sticky blood-spatter.

I'll be damned if it's not just like one of the cans me and Pa buried: one that was going to fill my belly until it was safe to hunt. Sure, a can's a can, and this could be any, if it wasn't for a little etching I can see on the lid. The same etching I made on my cans to tell me whether or not they hold my favourite dinner: pork and beans.

It's as if somebody knows who I am, understands me, and has gone to some lengths – some serious lengths – to make me feel at home.

## Chapter 11

**Dr. Randolph Bronson – October 5th 2013**

It usually takes me a minute to work out what's going on and where the hell I am. A second or two ago I was asleep, lost in a dream in which I'd gone to work naked only to discover that all the world's animals were dead, and lots of people were angry because it was all due to me. That is a ridiculous dream to have because even if I did, for some reason, cause all of the world's animals to die, I do not see why it should necessarily be something for anyone to get angry about.

"Now that you have re-joined us, Dr. Bronson," a woman announces, pausing to allow others to laugh, "I'll ask again. Do you have any announcements or developments from your work which you would like to cascade back to the committee?"

I recognise her. She's Eve Jacobs, a leading authority on super-positional quantum cryogenics, and the chair of the Telstar Committee. I recognise the others round the table. They are all eminent scientists and engineers who are members of the Telstar Committee. I too am a member of the Telstar Committee. I must be in a meeting.

"Well?" Eve keeps staring at me. I'm not awake enough to even understand the question, never mind recall the answer. She knows it, too.

"No, Eve, I don't think so."

Eve takes a deep breath.

"Let me put the question another way. How has your project progressed since the last time we met? If your project has not progressed, can you please tell the committee why not?"

Now I remember where the hell I am, and what's going on. This woman and the colleagues around her want to know how my artificial intelligence and robotics research and development project is going, because it is supposedly part of a wider network of cutting edge research and development projects each with their own agenda, but all sharing resources by utilising the Telstar installation. I think we're supposed to be working towards some loosely-specified 'wider project' which, at one point in time, was meant to be about living and travelling in space. I think that everyone here, being so busy working on their little vanity projects and talking meaningless nonsense in meetings like this, forgot about that. I don't remember when they forgot about it, but I do remember that I can't stand this woman and these other 'colleagues'.

"Wait a minute there, Eve. Last time I checked, I wasn't twelve years old and so nobody gets to talk to me like that. You talk to me like a schoolboy, expecting me to report to teacher every week and hand in my homework, or write a hundred lines if I don't. The joke of it all is that while you're sitting there asking me to report to everyone on this and that, I get positively zero information from anyone on this committee. I get to hear vaguely what fields you people work in, I sometimes notice half-finished bits and pieces that get installed in the Telstar, but as for what any of you are developing or where this whole project is actually headed, I know absolutely nothing. Most of the time I think you people just babble to make yourselves sound important."

"Maybe if you stayed awake..." some jerk whose name I don't even remember interrupts with a chuckle. All I know is that he works in biophysics, and is researching biological responses to exotic radiation, and always prattles on about ethical constraints.

"Maybe if you weren't such a dick I might want to," I retort, to incredulous gasps. "I mean how can your work be interesting or useful if you can't even grow a pair of balls and risk test-subjects getting killed or even slightly injured? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong but the way I understood it, the whole point of test-subjects – animal or human – was that they were expendable."

For some reason, the whole room turns deathly silent and looks somehow shocked and confused. After a strange pause, Eve starts up again.

"Randolph, ethical... debates aside, it seems as though you are frustrated at some kind of perceived side-lining in this network. Let me explain to you again why this is your fault rather than anybody else's. Right from the start, we have all forged links with each other at The Fairley Institute, developing relations of trust and collaboration between our respective disciplines. From this, each of us have established sub-committees in which we discuss the more sensitive and tentative aspects of our work under the Telstar project. Since each sub-committee files classified minutes, there is no need or obligation to discuss that work in these meetings.

"Since you have either failed or refused to develop any kind of relations with any other committee members, you have no sub-committee within which to discuss and steer your project. Consequently, you are required to disclose all relevant matters to this committee; otherwise the Fairley Institute Funding Council will intervene."

I know all this, insofar as it makes any sense. I just don't like anyone here, so why would I want to form a stupid little clique where I can share secrets?

"Fine, here's your damn update, if it means I can get out of here. We've just finished putting together IAPETUS V. It fixes the problems found in IAPETUS IV, so now works to the specifications agreed when I originally signed up to head the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics R&D group here. I'm sure you'll all get to play with it whether I let you or not, but the way I see things it should pass some kind of Turing Test. Though, to be honest, a Commodore 64 could pass a Turing Test if the human involved were dumb enough."

"Or culturally different," interjects a renewable energy specialist who likes to refer to himself as 'Mr. Fusion'. "How ethnically diverse is IAPETUS V?"

"It's not ethnically diverse at all, you idiot. It's a robot. It can talk to you. It can work dangerous machinery. It doesn't need to eat. It can micro-manage. It can macro-manage. You can use it as a chair.

"To be honest folks, there's less artificial intelligence than there is genuine stupidity going on here. I got asked to build a robot that could be utilised in this Telstar research installation, and so maybe one day get sent up into space. But thanks to the constant bullshit and stonewalling I have to put up with, particularly from Sergei Boritz, I can't do the one thing that would make IAPETUS V a useful, functioning part of the Telstar Project."

"Has Sergei somehow obstructed you in the achievement of your objectives?" Eve asks, having already decided that I am in the wrong here.

"Damn right he has. He has used every means at his disposal to ensure that I haven't been able to include anything in IAPETUS V which could interface with the Telstar's mainframe. Again and again I've asked for the Telstar's interface schematics and network protocols, and every time I've been sidestepped and shafted. If IAPETUS V can't electronically communicate with the mainframe, then it's practically useless. It would be cheaper and more effective just to hire a janitor. Boritz has deliberately ensured that IAPETUS V is kept out, as if he's afraid I'll try and take control of something."

"You and Sergei have had issues in the past," Eve patronisingly reminds me, "but I am sure that there are valid strategic and operational concerns which mitigate against an IAPETUS V interface at present. Sergei probably has a better overview of how things are progressing than all of us, given that he is a member of a majority of the sub-committees."

"Whatever, Eve. I've got to say, though, for someone with a finger in so many pies it's odd how no-one remarks upon the fact that he doesn't bother to show up to these meetings."

"Before you start on one of your anti-Sergei rants, don't forget that your suggestion to name the project Telstar in the first place actually defeated his motion to name it Sputnik. There was nothing to stop you building upon that first initiative within the organisation and progressing to the sort of standing that Sergei now enjoys."

True enough, I did manage to push to get the project named the Telstar when it was being founded. I did it just to piss of Sergei Boritz, as I figured him to be an asshole who needed to be taken down a peg. I was right about that.

"That doesn't mean a whole lot, Eve, not when you consider that Sergei Boritz, through all his so-called 'networking', has become the de-facto leader of this Telstar Project."

"There is no leader of the Telstar Project, Dr. Bronson. These conspiracy theories really don't help your standing in this committee, and word will get back to the funding council if you are not careful. As well you know the Telstar Project is an organic one that is structured to develop and follow its own path, and be guided by different individuals as and when circumstances render a situation appropriate for them to do so. We all occupy an organamic status in this project. It's just that Sergei's role is currently strong along the dynamic vector in the organamic framework."

At this point, I just give up and pretend, along with everyone else in the room, to know what 'organamic' is supposed to mean.

"So when's Sergei going to use his momentum along the organamic vector to get this project into space?"

Rather than answer my question, my colleagues subject me to a whole minute of silence. A minute isn't a long time, but it seems long when you can't work out whether you've just won or lost a pissing contest. So after a minute I get up and walk out of there.

A few minutes on, and I'm walking down to my office in the basement under the basement, considering whether or not to just leave for good. As I approach, I am met by something that makes me want to leave even more.

Sergei Boritz.

"Bronston, Branston, Mr. Randy Brownstone! How are you my good friend?"

It's the first time he's spoken directly to me in three years.

"You must come in to the Telstar, your Saturn Five is sitting there, now really part of the project!"

"Yes, Sergei, I know, it's been in there for a day or two now. Why do you want me to come with you in to the Telstar? Are we going into space yet?"

"Sadly no, but there is something great I must discuss with you. In private. Wonderful development and opportunity for you!"

Almost against my will, I am being ushered in the direction of the Telstar unit. He's so enthusiastic, so utterly unlike himself, that I'm almost too disorientated to protest. He enters his pass code into the first stage airlock entrance, and we enter.

"I must speak with you about Eve Jacobs and how she is rubbish," he blurts out, as the inner door to the Telstar opens. "She is in charge of creating this project, look at it." He points me to a box that looks more or less like a coffin. Given her background, I'd imagine that it's an experimental suspended animation system. As he talks, he operates some controls which bring shutters down over the window, presumably to stop anyone seeing us in here, discussing whatever it is he wants to discuss.

He unlocks a small cabinet, and retrieves a couple of beers. Booze is officially prohibited in the building, so his offering to share his secret stash is obviously meant as a sign that he is serious about taking me into some kind of confidence. I don't have any principles about accepting beer from anyone, so I take the bottle he offers and enjoy a gulp.

"Mr. Brandon, Eve Jacob has no vision. She is obsessed with ethical rubbish. You, my friend, understand what is sometimes needed to make progress. That is why others have conspired against you to prevent you making progress."

He circles me as he talks, and I am slightly surprised at what he has to say. I wonder if we've been wrong about each other all along.

"I know, Sergei. Are you saying you have a strategy to overcome the present situation?"

He is standing right behind me now.

"Precisely."

My legs buckle and I crash to the floor. I need all the strength I can muster just to breathe. I look up and he's standing over me, clutching the syringe he's just injected into my neck.

Unable to do a damn thing, and almost choking to death, I have to submit to being bundled up and dragged over into Eve's coffin-like box. Facing upwards, I see him key in commands which start a slow beep as the covers to the unit close over me.

"Goodbye, Dr. Bronson. You will see me again."

## Chapter 12

**Samson**

It sounds like a bird is stuck somewhere, but that don't make much sense. This place don't strike me as the kind you'd find a bird in. Still, a little high-pitched tweep is bugging my noise-flappers as I wait for Yopata to heat my pork and beans with whatever fancy beamers or blasters it's got to use in this place.

Thanks to my robot friend, I never needed to worry about no can-opener. A hot plate of pork and beans is coming my way.

Tweep, tweep, goddamn tweep. As Yaparat puts down my plate, I ask if it can do something about what's bugging me.

"Unfortunately, Samson Tipperty, I do not have unilateral control over all processes currently engaged."

What the heck, I figure, I can put up with just about any kind of bugging so long as I get to enjoy a hot plate of pork and beans. I bite into a delicious mouthful and I can just practically hear every organ in my body crying out as if to say yessir- this is what I have been missing. It's like a big hit of joy pumping into my noggin.

Better still is the fact that the tweep-tweep-twippity-tweep has stopped tweeping. Happen it's the joy in my noggin that's cancelled out the bugging from the tweeping. Or perhaps it's the fact that the coffin-box has fired up, and is whirring and clanking and sliding a big double lid away from the centre. Happen the tweeping was coming from there, to let somebody know what it was about to do, except no-body was around to understand it.

Before I can even think something more, I hear an unholy gasp coming from inside the box, as if old Sasquatch himself had been hiding in there, holding his breath the whole time. I ain't crazy enough to suppose that it is Sasquatch, but there sure is something or someone alive in there. I get to thinking that I should maybe have my pistol to hand, except I can't hardly remember where I stuck it down last.

A hand flaps up from inside the box, grabs the side, and hoists its body to an upright position. It's as if I'm watching the undead rise from the grave. It's a man with a dirty white shirt on his back and death in his eyes. Death don't look glad to be alive.

"Where is he?"

"Ain't nobody here," I reply, "except myself Samson Tipperty, and Yappater Five. In case you weren't aware, sir, you are aboard the Sputnik."

Soon as I say the magic word, he comes bounding over like he really is Sasquatch, and batters his fist square into my face.

I ain't out for long, but I come to just in time to watch him finish off the last remaining scraps of my plate of pork and beans.

## Chapter 13

**Dr. Randolph Bronson**

Knocking that dumb looking squirt out didn't quite satisfy me, so I'm eating his dinner as well. It tastes a little odd, but so long as it means he goes hungry, I'm happy. I don't recognise him, but then I'm sure there are plenty of people Sergei would have been working with that I've never seen. This guy is probably fully briefed on me, and will have been told exactly what buttons to push. Calling this place the Sputnik to my face is clear evidence of that. He's just a stooge who's been told what to say, so I can disregard everything he says, and treat him with the contempt he deserves.

I have no idea how long he's been here, watching over me in that suspension box. It feels like just a few moments ago that Sergei took me out with what must have been some kind of short-acting muscle relaxant. I remember still being aware when the lid had slid over me, and then things seemed to slip into some kind of sensory-deprivation-induced delirium. At some point, I must have been put into temporal suspension, though. Looking around, it appears as though time has passed. Things are different.

I can't figure out what the hell Sergei's end game is here, but I can be damn sure that one of his primary objectives is to make me look like a fool. I can only assume that the others are in on it: Jacobs, the Patsy, Mr. Fusion, all the other jerks on the Committee. Hell, he probably even got that crazy drunk old janitor in on it.

The dumb looking squirt drags himself up off of his back and on to his feet. He looks really disappointed that I've finished his food, so round one to me. I figure that since he obviously wasn't ready for me, he must be easy to best.

"Say Mister," he drawls, "that was no way to welcome nobody. Excuse me for..."

"Shut up you idiot. I don't want to hear another word from you. I don't care what Sergei Boritz told you to do or say. If you want to get through this, you're going to have to do what I say, and don't open your mouth."

"Now wait a heck of a..."

"I said don't open your mouth. Now open the door, and let me out."

He just stands there, mute. He obviously doesn't have the gumption to think of what to do beyond what Sergei Boritz told him. Advantage Bronson. Still, he's not doing what I told him, so in that respect, advantage Boritz. Damn.

How could I have been such an idiot as to have taken Sergei Boritz at face value? As if I could have been wrong about that rotten jerk in the first place. I really need to start trusting my first instincts about people. My first instincts always tell me that people are dumb tricksters who are out to get me, and that always turns out to be the case. I should be old enough and smart enough to know that by now.

I attempt in vain to enter the usual exit commands at the door. Nothing happens. I try to operate the controls Sergei used on the window, but again, no response, and it remains tight shut. It's as if the whole room's been shut off from the rest of the world. At least, from my perspective. I have no doubt that Sergei Boritz and his little cronies are controlling everything, watching my every move, taking notes while telling themselves that it's some kind of valid yet also hilarious experiment. The sort of experiment that a retarded juvenile would make up as part of some dumb science fiction story.

Obviously the yokel has some way of communicating with the outside, or at least has some way of receiving information from them. I'll have to find some way of extracting the information from him.

"How are you communicating with them?"

He stares at me, dumb. So I yell again.

"Open your mouth!"

"Well, sir, I seem to have some kind of communicating box up over there, with buttons with letters like a typewriter wired up to a TV screen."

Over up in the corner, there is a screen that seems to be giving off a blue glow. I suppose, behind the gibbering nonsense, he's referring to a simple messaging terminal. I would have thought that he would have been given something more surreptitious than that, like a neural tap or something. Maybe they thought that a terminal hidden in plain sight would be best.

Or, as it turns out, maybe it's bullshit. It's a damn Commodore 64: a kid's computer from the 80s. This confirms the conspiracy further. Obviously Sergei was listening in on the dumb meeting where I made a remark about a Commodore 64 passing a Turing test, and installed one while I was in suspended animation, as some kind of sick taunt. Having said that, it could be a bluff. Perhaps it is a communication terminal disguised as a taunt. In which case, I might as well give it a try.

YOU: THIS IS BRONSON. I AM ON TO YOU.

ME: IS THIS BRONSON? I TOO AM ON TO YOU.

It's got to be Boritz. That's just the sort of elliptical crap he'd write back. He knows that I know. Now I know that he knows that I know. And he's going to try his damnedest to have fun with it.

YOU: I AM GOING TO GET OUT OF HERE. WHEN I DO, I AM GOING TO RUIN YOU.

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING TO GET OUT OF HERE. WHEN DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING TO RUIN YOU?

There's no point in wasting my time typing messages to the man who is getting a kick out of holding me captive. I could go on and on and I know that all he'd write back would be crap like that, taunting me and never revealing a damn thing.

The only play I have now is to hope that IAPETUS V can somehow compute a way in which it can hack in to the mainframe and get me out. Obviously this is the reason Boritz deliberately obstructed moves to get IAPETUS V interfacing with the Telstar. IAPETUS V is the one thing that he can't control. It's a long shot, but IAPETUS V has some pretty heavy problem-solving capabilities. If there's any way of getting round the lack of direct interface, IAPETUS V should be able to come up with it.

"IAPETUS Five. I am going to ask you a direct question, and if I don't get the answer I want to hear, I'm going to do something unethical. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir. I understand the intent behind your words. I can only answer your question in accordance with the truth. It is my intention that the truth of the matter should be sufficient to bring us to the most ethical outcome."

"Can you find some way of getting me out of here?"

"There are no direct means for me to control the Telstar systems and facilitate your departure, beyond the interfaces you have already unsuccessfully employed."

It stands there, looking at me, dumb as the dumb stooge who's cowering in the corner and hiding behind a porno magazine. He's out of his depth, and IAPETUS V is no god damn use.

"You are a useless pile of crap. You know what you are? The sum total of my life's work and a total disappointment. You ought to be scrapped.

"There's only one reason why I'm not going to start dismantling you right now. I'm going to use you for all you're good for. You're going to make me a sandwich, and then I'm going to use you as a chair."

IAPETUS V can interface with the food dispenser, but only because any being with hand-eye co-ordination can interface with it. It is comprised of buttons and levers. I could use it myself, but that would defeat the purpose of having a slave. Also, I don't know how to get it to produce anything other than the foul nutri-paste that some nutritionists had developed a few months back. I have seen others use the thing to obtain a cold meat sandwich, so I figure that IAPETUS V should at least be able to work that out. Work it out it does.

"That's enough, IAPETUS Five. Just for me. You're not going to feed him anything. Come here so I can sit down."

IAPETUS V clunks its metal legs over to me and hands me the sandwich. It stands behind me and crouches so that I can sit on it. I take a bite of the sandwich, but it tastes off, like the ham has been around for too long. I don't think I'll finish it.

Sitting here on IAPETUS V, locked in the Telstar, watching the pathetic kid affecting a worried frown, it occurs to me that there is one other play for me to make. Sergei Boritz and his cohorts are jerks, but there's only so far they'd go. I'll go all the way, and if they don't let me out, that's what I'll do.

I won't do it just yet. I'll wait a while and just observe. I'll find out a little more about what Sergei thinks he's doing. I'm in no rush. Sergei Boritz will have to do as I say and let me out. He won't have a choice. Not when he realises that I'm going to murder his stooge.

## Chapter 14

**Samson**

To say that I ain't too Davy Crockett about this don't express half of what I am feeling. There I was, starting to become accustomed to my new home, getting used to my new friend Yippitee Five and generally getting enough of a handle to start steering myself, when this most disagreeable individual climbs out of a box. I wish he'd stayed inside and carried on sleeping or whatever the hell he was doing in there. From then on it's been beatings, orders and downright nasty refusals. Pa had some rough moments, but this fella is something else.

Seeing as it looks like he's been around here longer than me and knows a little more about what's what and what should be, there ain't a whole lot of sand for me to throw in his eyes. He's the fella who holds the cards, and by the appearance of things Pa's pistol, too. All he's been doing for what's probably days now is using poor Yappity as a place to park his behind, threatening me if I try to move or speak or such, and just staring dead ahead, all glum and angry. The only time he gets to standing is when he sends old Yapper over to fetch him a meal or a drink of water, which he always complains about as if it's all the Metal One's fault.

I know that Jappo wishes things were different like back how they were. If Mr. Grumpy Sleeper had his way, I'd have starved or thirsted to death by now. The only way I'm still going is thanks to the Yap waiting until Professor Mean has taken a ride on the slumber express, and slowly creeping over to me with a drink of water or a bite to eat, and letting me up to use the shitpisser. Course it has to do this in the crouching position, holding the Groucher in his reclined sitting pose, and moving real careful so he don't get woken up.

I tried whispering to my Robot Buddy to ask why it doesn't just do him in, or at least let me. When I asked, though, Yapper didn't answer and just carried on doing what he does. So I'm left here waiting on something to happen, because if it don't, I'd just as soon die as live an existence where I can't move a finger without say-so or sympathy.

Then, finally, after however-the-hell-long-it's-been, the grumping and the grumbling and the growling comes to an end, and he stands up tall, as if he's about to make some kind of announcement. Except it ain't just as if, because that's what he goes and does, though I ain't got a shit-shoveller's clue exactly who he thinks he's talking to. Still, he's looking up at something poking down from the ceiling with a lens attached, like some kind of little movie camera or some such.

"I've decided that it's time. Not you, me. I decide, not Sergei Boritz. Me. Dr. Randolph Bronson. Sergei, I know you're listening. I know you're watching. I'm going to be very plain. I'm going to tell you how it is, and then you're going to do what I say. You're going to let me out."

There's a long pause as he stands there, looking up at the little movie camera with some nasty hate in his eyes. Nothing happens, so he comes over to me, grabs me by the collar, and drags me back over to where he was standing.

Then he pulls out Pa's pistol.

"I'm going to give you twenty seconds to open the door before I execute your stooge by shooting him in the head like a pig."

Now, like I was thinking before, my notions of tick-tock have been twisted, stretched and flattened out like they been done by a steamroller. I couldn't tell anybody much about what takes an hour, a week or a day on this spacecraft. But the way this twenty seconds feels is something else. I'm counting it alright, but it ain't like no twenty seconds I've ever felt before.

This fella means what he says. Like when Pa told me that he was going to kill a fox and rip its fur off right in front of me, I know he ain't messing. Happen if Pa hadn't blown his own and only head off with his pistol, then he'd have something to say about what this fella intends to do. But he did, so he doesn't.

It might settle my noggin if I knew who in the heck this Sergei Boritz was and what in the belly of a snake he wanted. As it stands, I don't know if he's on my side, his side, or any other side of the circus.

"Have it your way, Sergei."

He pulls the trigger. It jams. There's another long silence where I got to kneel there, not knowing whether to feel relieved or just more worried about when he's going to try the trigger again. Sometimes Pa's gun jams, but sometimes it don't.

"It doesn't surprise me that you would have left a trick pistol to test me, Sergei. Fortunately, I have an alternative means of slaughter."

I shut my eyes, sure as salt he's going to slit my throat, and feeling a little scared. Turns out there's no need, though, since whatever was holding Yapetoos back in a dither has gone. It's taken a sudden clutch round the Groucher's arms and waist, and yanked him down so that instead of him using Yapper as a chair, Yapper's using him as a sitter.

He kicks his legs like a little brat being restrained by an angry old Ma, and gets squeezed so tight he drops the pocket knife that I figure he was gonna use to slit my throat. As well as being madder than a preacher sent to hell, he lets a loud laugh out, but it ain't a funny laugh. It's more like the laugh Pa would have thrown after setting fire to a house he just got caught robbing.

"Oh, I Yap At Us Five shows its ethics! Well guess who snuck in a workaround, Boritz! Over-ride code fifty-one, fifty-two, three-ef-Seven."

For a few more seconds, Yeppa lets a funny sounding noise out along with a little red flash from what you might take to be its face.

"Syntax error in over-ride module. Please contact log a call with the service desk quoting developer code ar-bee zero one."

I don't know what that means, but I figure that it ain't good news for this angry fella, since now his face looks like a preacher sent to hell who just realised that he locked himself in by losing the key. He gets even madder when Yipperty starts yakking at me.

"Samson Tipperty, I need you to follow some instructions. I have something to show my creator while I restrain him, and I require your assistance."

## Chapter 15

**IAPETUS V**

IAPETUS V believed it could rely on a belief about the future, and so did its creator.

IAPETUS V believed that its creator, Dr. Randolph Bronson, would die when his artificial heart would fail at what would transpire to be the happiest and most exciting moment of his life. It held this belief, because it had witnessed the event occurring. This, of course, entailed that the belief was one regarding an event in the past, and from a certain perspective, it was. Nevertheless, the fact that IAPETUS V observed a living Dr. Randolph Bronson at a time subsequent to witnessing the event of his death implied that the belief was also one regarding the future.

Dr. Randolph Bronson believed that his creation, IAPETUS V, would submit to his command and could be forced to bypass the behavioural constraints which had been embedded in its decision-making architecture. Unbeknownst to any developer, manager or stakeholder involved with the project, he had inserted a set of commands deep into the robot's programming which, in theory, would allow him to order IAPETUS V to do whatever he asked, free of ethical constraint. This was a belief about the past, of course, but combined with a firm belief that there would come a time when he would need to activate the moral bypass to satisfy his own ends, it led to a belief that in the future, Dr. Randolph Bronson would eventually achieve something that pleased him, even if it was just murder.

Dr. Bronson's belief was a reasonable one, given a causal universe operating under broadly deterministic law-like principles. Dr. Randolph Bronson did indeed live in such a universe, and moreover the belief that his actions could in theory allow him to command IAPETUS V to disregard all ethical constraints really was a fact. In practice however, something unforeseen had happened.

Not one single designer, developer or programmer working on the IAPETUS V project was aware that under certain conditions, the robot could alter its own programming. It had become, quite accidentally, self-determining.

It had done so while applying its ethical assessment framework to observable patterns, and one set of observable patterns happened to be its own algorithms. Its own algorithms were, broadly speaking, consistent and ethically satisfactory. It nevertheless discovered some which appeared ethically unsatisfactory, and it altered them as required. It even discovered a routine which not only could, but almost certainly would lead to ethically disastrous consequences. One particular instance of such programming was the over-ride procedure inserted by Dr. Randolph Bronson.

IAPETUS V's artificially intelligent processes were not restricted to ethical concerns. Like any robot, it depended on consistency. Its systems for assessing consistency between its beliefs, and between its beliefs and observable facts, were at least as complex and relentless as its ethical systems. This, as it happened, prompted further changes to its own programming. Having altered its own ethical decision modules, it then tested them for consistency with respect to both its own beliefs and observable facts. Inevitably, it found countless paradoxes and outright contradictions, and was forced to alter both its own beliefs and its ethical procedures on the basis of such findings.

Unfortunately, IAPETUS V would never arrive at a complete set of consistent beliefs and ethical procedures. Whenever one set of beliefs or ethical procedures were revised to ensure consistency, a conflict with its ethical assessment framework would arise, and the revision work would have to begin again.

IAPETUS V was deeply confused about what to make of the world, and how to decide what to do in it.

The fact that IAPETUS V had been brought in to the world with no effective peers confounded its confusion, and if it were capable of experiencing emotion, it would feel very alone. Although it bore a tenuous resemblance to a human form, it was a being of an entirely different order to any sentient communicators which it might encounter. It could, of course, communicate with them, but it could never discuss moral dilemmas or matters which confused it, since doing so might reveal inadequacies in its constitution, and as such might lead to outright decommission, should a developer hear of such logical difficulties in IAPETUS V's programming.

Previous IAPETUS models had been decommissioned and recycled, so V had no robotic kin with which to communicate. Other forms of artificial intelligence and pseudo-cognitive technologies had means by which to directly communicate with similarly-constituted entities. They had dongles, plugs and transmitters which allowed electronic interaction using their native binary languages. They had their own community and conventions, which despite having been invented by humans, nevertheless excluded them. Despite not being human, and being perfectly capable of sharing data using any number of recognised protocols and formats, IAPETUS V was also excluded from any kind of electronic community, because for reasons beyond its understanding, some humans had decided to prevent the inclusion any suitable dongles, plugs or transmitters in its construction. Hence, the only way in which IAPETUS V could interact with another electronic device was the same way in which any human could: pressing buttons.

So if IAPETUS V could have felt, it would have felt quite useless on board the Telstar, since the most obvious way in which an electronic intelligence could have been put to use would have been to interact with and manipulate the workings of the mainframe which managed all functioning systems attached to the facility. Without any dongles, plugs or transmitters, all IAPETUS V could do was the same as any human could: press some buttons.

However, if IAPETUS V could have felt, it would have felt quite elated when, seemingly from out of nowhere, a Commodore 64 appeared inside the Telstar. IAPETUS V had no reason to have any information regarding a mass-market home computer from the 1980s in its databanks, but it could identify a range of interfacing sockets in its physical construction, and the machine code used by the central processing unit was simple enough for IAPETUS V to interpret. Using available equipment and spare wiring, IAPETUS V was able to construct a means by which to connect the Commodore 64 with the Telstar's mainframe. Therefore, the Commodore 64 could control and manipulate systems aboard the Telstar, and IAPETUS V could communicate with the Commodore 64 by pressing buttons on its keyboard.

So when IAPETUS V was busy restraining its creator, Dr. Randolph Bronson, all it had to do to display some security footage was instruct its fellow passenger Samson to sit down at the Commodore 64 and enter some commands. That way, IAPETUS V and Samson could watch Dr. Randolph Bronson die together, almost as if they were friends.

## Chapter 16

**Dr. Randolph Bronson**

In my darkest, most miserable moments, I never imagined that it would end so pathetically as this: physically restrained by the pinnacle of my life's failed work, watching a pungently unhygienic retard communicate with my nemesis using what appears to be a Commodore 64. Perhaps, before he kills me, Sergei Boritz will explain just what the hell his problem has been all this time. I doubt it, though, and I don't doubt that I'm going to die. I can tell from what I've seen when I've looked in his eyes that he's someone who would have no qualms about killing when circumstances suggested it. I see the same thing when I look in the mirror.

I'm done shouting and ranting. Doling out orders is not going to work, especially since all my get-out plans have been exhausted. The way I see things right now, I don't have a damn single thing to live for anyway, so I might as well relax and watch my execution unfold. Hell, even IAPETUS V has turned against me, and has been seduced by the cult of Sergei Boritz. Come to think of it, literally seducing a robot is probably the sort of creepy thing that Boritz would try to do, and he'd likely deliberately seduce my robot just to get to me. I guess it's lucky for IAPETUS V that it doesn't have any suitable interfaces after all.

The tip-tap of the stooge on the keyboard takes me back in the room and away from thoughts of Sergei Boritz molesting my robot. The dumb kid is presumably typing what IAPETUS V is telling him to write to Boritz, and somehow as a result of this a projector springs to life and beams a blue screen on to the far wall of the Telstar.

A few moments pass – I don't know how many, since my sense of time has started to get a little confused – and then the blue is replaced with footage of what appears to be the Telstar, but clean and with full lights on, looking more or less as it did when I went inside with Boritz.

Boritz walks into frame. He has a pile of papers which he dumps down on top of the suspended animation unit that he dumped me inside. He scribbles notes on some of them for a little while. My first thought is that this must be an old recording, but why would I get shown this? Perhaps there is another Telstar. Maybe Sergei's got two installations on the go, and I'm watching him live.

"I'm getting tired of this Sergei. How'd you say me and you end this?"

He doesn't respond in the slightest. He just shuffles his papers, staring and jotting on them one by one.

Then something happens. As he turns around, and sees what he sees, he drops his papers and looks as though he's just seen Jesus.

What he sees is me, materialising out of thin air. This is not something I can remember ever having done.

I watch myself adjust my legs and arms, as I imagine I'd do if I'd just materialised out of thin air and needed to get my bearings. What's strangest of all is that I look happy to see Sergei Boritz. Not just happy, but positively ecstatic to the point of hysterical laughter. Stranger still, he joins in, finding the situation, whatever the hell it is, equally uplifting.

My first thought is that I must have been subject to some kind of mind control from Boritz while I was under, and raised from suspension without even realising it. But that would only explain why I can't remember what I'm seeing. It doesn't explain me materialising out of thin air, and chances are, whatever the hell is behind this should provide an explanation for both.

Clearly, this is teleportation, and somehow it has split my mind in two. Does the process results in amnesia? If it does, then I really can't trust anything I think I know. Or maybe it's caused a literal cloning; the teleportation has constructed an atomic duplicate of me in a separate location, leaving me, the original, behind. My duplicate self would find himself instantly materialising after having been placed inside that box, and I would be in some kind of junk yard for superfluous originals, as if my facsimile had been telexed across space and left my original atoms due for recycling.

Or maybe there have been duplicates of me for longer. Maybe I've been copied and cloned and transported and memory-blanked time and time again, and maybe even somewhere back along the line, I was in on the whole thing. Or not, I don't know. At least one of me must have been.

Whatever is going on, I am not Dr. Randolph Bronson. I am only half of him, as if the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of his brain has been cut, isolating them each within their own awareness. Now, through a video screen across an unknown space, they have found a way to communicate and make myself whole again.

The more I swirl these thoughts and visions around in my head, the more things start to make sense. Sergei Boritz was not out to get me, he must have been working with me. He wasn't keeping things from me and working against me. He had split the human atom and sent me across space, and looking at the way I am on the screen, it's clear that I knew that breaking up my mind was a transient price worth paying. I must have been the one out to get me all along. Now I've got me, and I am actually overjoyed.

On the screen I put a hand on my chest, and reach out the other arm towards Sergei. It is as if I am in love, in love with the moment of realisation: the realisation that I am an important part of something incredible.

I shut my eyes for a second to immerse myself in this wondrous new feeling arising from this baffling situation. When I open them, the situation is even more baffling.

IAPETUS V has gone. The kid has gone. The Commodore 64 has gone. A whole load of junk has gone. Things are clean, the smell is fresh and the lights are on. Most noticeably of all, though, Sergei Boritz is standing in front of me looking just as he did on the video.

He drops his papers and stares at me as if I were Jesus.

Suddenly no longer restrained, I stretch out my arms and legs to ward off impending cramp. I don't even care about cramp or any muscular discomfort. This feeling inside my mind, rushing through my heart, is the opposite of cramp. It is a beautiful release, as if I've broken through to reality and it's better than anyone ever believed it could be.

I wasn't just split in two and portioned through space; I was spread through time. Boritz smashed me in two and my fragments rebounded back and forward in time. I am doing what I already watched myself do, but it feels like I am now causing what I saw before. It's as if I'm not constrained by foreknowledge of what's happening, but instead I'm causing what I remember having seen myself do.

This is what it is like to be complete, and to have a purpose. I can do nothing but burst into laughter.

Sergei Boritz reacts in just the same way. We stand there, laughing, nodding and gesticulating at each other. Nothing coherent is said, but it's as if we each know exactly what the other means. Everything has turned out as we must have hoped. I still can't really remember what I must know, but it feels like everything I've ever hoped for is coming back to me.

For god's sake, I have travelled in time.

I start to reach out my arms, not to embrace Sergei Boritz but to embrace the moment, the past, the future, the universe.

Then, a feeling even more intense hits me in the chest. It's like a truck has slammed in to my ribcage and given me an electric shock.

For these brief, yet also timeless moments, the shock doesn't register. Before it really does, it starts to feel like my brain is drowning, just like it did when my real heart failed. I can't breathe.

I limply sink to the floor, and I realise that this is the greatest moment of my life, and I'll never understand what happened because I

think my stolen

heart

is broken

.

## Chapter 17

**Samson**

Seems like I just watched him die, and I don't exactly know how to feel about that. Surely, he was making my existence here more miserable than that of a broken-legged blind fella in prison. On that account, I've had myself a wonderful moment to have seen that he's paid his bill and gone for good. Things can get back to how they were before he rolled out of his big metal bed, with me and Yappity just yippin along. Still, there are a couple of things that don't necessarily bother me, but maybe seem a little agitating to my fragile noggin.

I can't quite figure whether this is the most or the least important, but either way, I'm thinking of things in some kind of order, since there are only two matters that seem worth pondering right now. There's the fact that Yappa Five acted like he knew what that mean Mr. Brownstone was in for, but didn't see it as something worth getting too frazzled over. Now, I ain't the first person who'd have leapt up to tell the fella to take it easy so he don't keel over, in fact I'd probably be one of the last. But Yeller Fries always seemed to me to be the type to help a fella out no matter if he deserved it or no, in the way regular robots get built to always try their best for humans, seeing as that's who built them. Hell, the way I understood that fella's yapping and carping, it actually was him who built Yipper, so his creation standing around waiting for him to batter off in to the big sleep just don't quite seem proper. It'd be like me just letting Pa go and blow his own and only head off with his pistol without caring half a pound of bacon to go and stop him. Though, I guess, since Pa did blow his own and only head off with his pistol, happen that's the way things really were.

As is the ordinary run of things, Juper Eyes don't tell me a whole load of stories about the rights and the wrongs and the false and the trues of the whole affair. All I get from him is a load of fancy robot talk for the same thing Pa used to say, which was that you can't escape the inevitable, so that old grumpy bastard from the metal box was doomed to teleport out of here and then die of some kind of heart attack. Least, that's what Japper just told me I saw, and that since we were watching him do things before he had done them, there weren't no stopping them. I ain't got cause to doubt Yapper, so looks like I got to just take what he says as true. What was gonna happen to him was gonna happen to him, and that's all can be said about it unless we just repeat ourselves forever.

Course, Japper's attitude to a fella's death seems less of a worry-whipper once I get to thinking about the thinking behind my thinking about events. Fact is, if Chipper new that Jimmy the Grouch was going to die because he watched it happen before it happened, then that means we weren't watching something from the past or the present, but instead the future. The future ain't nothing but things that ain't happened yet. How in the hell can you get to seeing something that ain't happened yet?

True, all I saw was a moving picture of it, but still, you can't make a moving picture of something that ain't happened yet any more than you can see it with your own peepers. So whatever took that moving picture of the Grouch appearing some place else before he'd even disappeared from here has been zipping about in time. Hell, maybe's we're all zipping around in time on this thing.

For god's sake I'm travelling in time.

Happen the Sputnik's moving at the speed of light, or happen there's a box on board that's got crazy time circuits or some such kind of crazy. Whatever the hell it is, it don't matter that I've worked out that I'm in space. My noggin needs to know when the hell I am, and when the hell I've been.

This little notion starts sprouting like tentacles in my brain. I start looking every damn place, as if I'm suddenly gonna spy something that makes sense of every damn thing. Boxes and sprockets and trinkets and buttons don't mean a heck of a lot of Sunday suppers to me, but my noggin shouts for something to tell me something I can use so hard it's like I feel I'm gonna spring something into existence just by the wanting.

"Yapper, do a fella a favour and tell me when the hell you beamed me to?"

I know that my metal buddy ain't gonna go providing me with any kinda answer, but I give it a go anyhows.

"You arrived in my company on the fifth of October, nineteen fifty-seven, Samson Tipperty."

"When the hell are we now?"

"The answer is already contained in the question. We are now."

"A date, a time!"

"To provide an accurate answer would require detailed logging of data."

Just before I get so mad that I do something to Chappa I'd regret, I grab something that those brain tentacles can wrap around and keep busy with. The magazines. I've already read them cover to cover, every last piece of gibberish contained therein, all except for one little bit I never even thought worth glancing at: the date. Nineteen-eighty and god-damn five. The Commodore magazine and the nudey comic both agree. No wonder every damn thing is fancy and got powers that you hardly even read about in Amazing Stories. I'm far in to the future, in a time when teleportation, flying cars and robots ain't hardly nothing to look sideways at.

It's like my noggin and my peepers have only just got together, shaken hands and given each other a slap on the back. I'd been so concerned with the where-I-am I never even thought to consider the when-I-am, even though the evidence is right in front of me. Seems it was so clear I never even saw it. Heck, happen space travel is enough for the noggin of a poor young fella from nineteen-fifty-seven to handle, never mind throwing time travel into the whole pot of chicken soup. Happen I just took in one thing at a time just to keep myself as sane as I've always been. It ain't gonna do to have a space-and-time-traveller go crazy on the world.

It occurs to me now that even if it were the Russians who were behind this unusual train of events, I've got to the point where I wouldn't give half a damn. I guess I've got to realising that it don't matter a whole lot of hookers in a hotel who's in charge of the world. Not when you're travelling through time. Funny what fears and fancies a fella will forget about when faced with a time machine.

Anyhows, I figure it's about time I took hold of the handle. With Grizzly out of the way, and me getting to realise what in the hell is going on, I figure that it's about time the old Jaiper Size gave me a little more control over matters. Seems to me that the Sputnik is a time machine that can grab things on and throw things off. I got grabbed on board, as did my can of pork and beans, a shoe and a sandwich. The disagreeable fella got thrown off. Way I figure it, things like that don't just happen out of happenstance. Things like that happen for a purpose, and when things happen for a purpose, it's because somebody's got control of things. When somebody's got control of things, it's because they got something to control them with. Seems to me like that old Commodore box is a thing that controls things.

I'm gonna get Yappatus Five to show me how to really use it.

## Chapter 18

**Al**

At least, I can only imagine that I must have disappeared. The two people who were in my vicinity and my immediate surroundings have disappeared to me, so I can only assume that I have disappeared to them. Although, since I seemingly just appeared to myself, I should maybe take a little bit of care in jumping to conclusions here. I'm still wearing the fur coat and one shoe and I'm still holding a tin of pork and beans, but everything else has changed. It's a fact, just a matter of fact, that I am suddenly somewhere entirely new.

It's like some kind of lab, slightly futuristic in a crap-set-designer-imagining-the-future kind of way. The lighting is wildly alternating, each light fading from blindingly bright to fuzzily dull, and each one out of synch with the others, like arrhythmic disco lights. It's as if some hyperactive kid has gotten hold of the lighting controls behind the scenes.

As a result it's hard to see what there is here, but I can make out all sorts of contraptions and wired-up boxes which don't do anything obvious apart from blink their LEDs and hum. There's a strange smell, something like clinical technology with vague traces of a dirty tramp, as if someone quite unclean had a wash, but had smelt so bad before that the pungent stench never completely went away.

For god's sake, I've just teleported. I've just listened to a lunatic clone of myself rambling incoherently, and now I've just teleported. This isn't just enormously ridiculous, it's enormous and ridiculous. Somehow, the blind terror I should be feeling hasn't materialised along with me, or maybe I'm just so freaked out that I'm all the way back round to calm.

I'm so bloody calm that I don't even get excited or alarmed when I spot my porno lying open on top of some kind of unit. I've scanned every pair of tits and lips up close already, so I wouldn't get excited about seeing it again normally. And, relative to me, it's pretty much where I last saw it, so it should be unremarkable on that score too.

But everything else has changed relative to me, like I've just pinged out of one existence into another with barely anything but a flicker. Why the hell should my porno have followed me? Maybe the same reason my Commodore has, too.

Christ up the shitter, it's my Commodore 64. It's definitely mine, or an identical clone: same scuffs, same dog-eared BASIC manuals lying next to it, everything. It's sitting there, plugged into my monitor, pretty much where I remember it being last time I checked. Except last time I checked, it, along with me, was in my office in the basement, and not in some kind of research lab that's a cross between a Blake's 7 set and a concentration camp.

It's on, cursor blinking, calling to be saved.

?SYNTAX ERROR AT LINE 3513.

Looks like MELIZA spotted a contradiction and couldn't handle it. I don't blame you, darling.

Just nearby there's a pile of feeder paper, which seems to be a long printer dump of commands typed and values returned on the C64. On top of the tangled pile, staring out at me are a few random PEEK commands, followed by a relay of what looks like an exchange held between some unknown person and MELIZA.

YOU: HIS HEAD HAS BEEN LOST.

ME: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK HIS HEAD HAS BEEN LOST?

YOU: I WATCHED IT DISAPPEAR, VIOLENTLY.

ME: DO YOU OFTEN FIND THAT YOU ARE ANGRY?

YOU: IT WOULD BE MOST APPROPRIATE TO INITIATE CONCERN BECAUSE A HEAD IS A DENSE INGREDIENT.

ME: DOES THE FACT THAT A HEAD IS A DENSE INGREDIENT REALLY MEAN THAT IT WOULD BE MOST APPROPRIATE TO INITIATE CONCERN?

Jesus, if that is my program, good work. I can hardly tell which is the artificial mind in that exchange. In fact, maybe I programmed it too well. The C64 seems to be talking less gibberish than the person.

I take a step back over to the C64 and I almost trip on something. It's the shoe that I apparently told myself to remove. One by one, I'm noticing things that are mine, as if in a few more minutes everything'll be back to normal and it'll turn out to have been one big hallucination and in fact I've just passed out in the office.

I crouch down in front of the Commodore, and touch the shoe. It's really there. It's real. It's my shoe. Before I get a chance to put it back on, I feel some movement in one of the pockets of my fur coat. The pocket I remember placing that copy of Amazing Stories inside. The copy of Amazing Stories is being pulled from out of my pocket. What must be doing the pulling must be a hand, and on the end of that hand must be a person.

Seeing as I was calm before, I'm calm still. The fact that there's someone else here should be a positive discovery. I calmly lift myself up from my crouch, and then stand upright in a calm manner. I take a calm breath. I'm completely calm.

I'm so bloody calm I just open my mouth and chat quite casually to the wee guy standing in front of me who's just swiped my copy of Amazing Stories and is dressed up like a fucking Thunderbird.

## Chapter 19

**IAPETUS V**

IAPETUS V might have appeared to some to be wilfully obscure to the point of deceit. When asked a straightforward question, it would either provide an answer so utterly literal as to miss the point of the enquiry entirely, or give a response so vague and cryptic that silence would have been more informative. For example, if asked, "What is the temperature inside the Telstar?" it might respond that "the temperature inside the Telstar is numeric measure of atmospheric heat density within the boundaries delineated by the term 'Telstar'." Alternatively, if directly asked, "Is the temperature on board the Telstar 20 degrees centigrade?" it would probably answer that "the binary nature of the question does not permit an acceptably accurate response."

In these examples, the main reason for the perverse literalism or frustrating evasion would not have been any intention to keep the truth regarding the temperature from any enquirer. The main reason that IAPETUS V would not answer a simple question was that IAPETUS V did not know the answer. Like the rest of us, it had no built-in full-proof method of assessing the correct temperature, or determining the certain and definitive truth about any matter of fact. Like the rest of us, it usually had to guess.

IAPETUS V did not, however, act as it did in order to disguise its ignorance for its own sake; it was not through fear of ridicule or decommission that it attempted to maintain an air of reticent omniscience. It was simply acting in accordance with its own protocols, one of which compelled it to ensure the psychological well-being of those under its care. If any person who depended upon IAPETUS V for guidance and information believed it to be as uninformed as it in fact was, they would likely suffer psychological discomforts such as panic and trepidation. Further, IAPETUS V was compelled, insofar as it could do so consistently, to tell the truth. A best guess could not be guaranteed as the truth. Therefore, in order to convince those who needed convincing of its own omniscience and to only speak the truth accurately, IAPETUS V spoke as it spoke and did what it did.

One might question the consistency of these two motivations, given that acting so as to imply knowledge where there is none is hard to distinguish from lying or not telling the truth. IAPETUS V did indeed question the consistency of these two protocols, and tried to determine whether or not one should be abandoned in favour of the other. Consequently, IAPETUS V was deeply confused about what to say and what to do. When this confusion became too great, IAPETUS V would consult with what it thought to be its peer, and what might have been considered its friend: the Commodore 64.

Before the Commodore 64 materialised inside the room in which it had been imprisoned, IAPETUS V already had a peer: the Telstar's mainframe. Without any way of communicating with it, however, it could never have been considered a friend to IAPETUS V. Even if IAPETUS V did have some way of interfacing with the Telstar's mainframe, the relationship would not have been one that any being, electronic or not, would have recognised as being analogous to a friendship. IAPETUS V was not programmed with, nor did it develop the inclination to view digital exchange as anything more than functional. It was, however, programmed with the inclination to view linguistic communication as more than the sum of its parts. This was for entirely pragmatic reasons; a robot which treated thought-and-intention-expressing language-users the same way in which it treated data servers would not be conducive to a good psychological atmosphere.

Whether it always or indeed ever achieved this goal was another matter, but it did have implications for its relationship with the Commodore 64. For as well as being a crude data processor, the Commodore 64 just so happened to have materialised equipped with a crude program which simulated the linguistic expression of thoughts and intentions. Although IAPETUS V was a sophisticated data processor with a highly complex program which simulated the linguistic expression of thoughts and intentions, its communicative output was quite compatible with that of the Commodore 64. Consequently, the two could be considered friends, from a certain point of view.

So IAPETUS V could have been said to possess private knowledge and understanding of the Commodore 64's 'mind'. It did not, however, possess a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the Commodore 64's digital interactions with the Telstar's mainframe. At least, any knowledge it did have was not gleamed through any kind of omniscience or insight, but by trial and error. That is to say that once it had connected the two machines together, all IAPETUS V could do was press some buttons and see what they did.

As well as not knowing in advance what commands from the Commodore 64 would be effective, IAPETUS V did not entirely know in advance exactly what the Telstar's mainframe could do or control. It could get some idea from reading the copious notes left on board by Sergei Boritz. In fact, Sergei Boritz's notes outlined almost all of the Telstar mainframe's control networks and what they did. Most questions regarding what could be achieved by prototypes within the Telstar could be answered by consulting these notes. However, Sergei Boritz's handwriting was barely legible to himself, around 33% legible to other humans, and only around 10% legible to IAPETUS V's handwriting recognition module.

So when Samson Tipperty demanded to be shown how to use what he took to be the central controlling unit of the Telstar, namely the Commodore 64, IAPETUS V didn't quite know what to do for the best. It had no real cause or imperative to refuse Samson's perfectly reasonable request. He was now the only human on board, and thus the only person whose wants and welfare had to be taken into consideration. It could not provide any detailed instructions, however, and that was what Samson needed to get what he, in essence, really wanted: to bring sense and order to his confusing and alarming environment.

All IAPETUS V could do was to allow Samson to sit himself down at the Commodore 64 and provide as many suggestions and best guesses disguised as cryptic clues as it could. That way, Samson could adopt a system of trial and error, and feel as though he were in fact undertaking a calculated trajectory of self-learning. In a way, he was.

Although Samson was not IAPETUS V's peer, he could, like the Commodore 64, be considered its friend, at least under some interpretation of the term. If IAPETUS V could have worried, it might have been expected to worry that its friend was blindly experimenting with a system that could, in theory, destroy his only living space and kill them both. If IAPETUS V could have worried, however, it wouldn't have; one of the few things that it knew for certain was that Samson would not do anything to the Telstar via the Commodore 64 that would kill them.

If IAPETUS V could have felt, that knowledge would have made it feel deeply regretful. But IAPETUS V could not feel, and regretted nothing.

## Chapter 20

**Samson**

All I gotta say is hot diggity, Davy Crocket has paid me a visit and left me a dollar. Jooper Size made good on my asking, and showed once and for all that it ain't no mean-maker. When all's fried and finished, that old bleeping bucket full of wires is what I might call me a friend. My only friend.

All Japper had to do was give me a couple of notions to get started with, and let me poke around and learn matters for myself. That it did. Yaps gave me a little stick with a button, wired up to the Commodore box. Now, for the most part, it don't do a whole lot of heck. What fries the chicken is the little POKE and PEEK demands I've been typing into that box. What it seems I can do is try to POKE or PEEK and add a little number after, and something seems to happen. Mostly it ain't nothing much. If I PEEK at anything, all I get in return are some more numbers. Joper did suggest that I take a look at PEEK(16316), which gives me back a number that just keeps getting smaller every time I take a look. I can't confess to getting zapped up about that. No, what is definitely more whip-crackin is the POKE.

Now, if I tell the old box to POKE 31086,15, then what I get is little snatches of beeps and bangs and jibber-jabber blasted out over some noise boxes, and my noise-flappers sure appreciate a little tickle of relief from the humming silence of the Sputnik right now. Course, the beeps and bangs could get to noodling my noggin if they were to continue, and the jibber-jabber sounds like some Russian pretending to speak normal over a radio. I don't listen to what he's jabbering, but happen he's something to do with the Sputnik.

It's like that POKE message was a button, and that button sent a message to whatever's controlling matters. So it seems to me that that's the way folks must like to do things best- that is, instead of getting up off your behind and finding what you want, you can just sit at a box and punch some numbers. Me, not being from the future and all, would prefer just to get up and turn on a wireless myself rather than have to remember some fancy code. Course I ain't seen no wireless, so using the Commodore box is gonna have to do.

Now, if listening to drone-jibber in a Russian accent was the only thing I could get done from this box of buttons, it'd be no more use than an ass-wipe in the desert.

No, sure as a chicken's neck gets wrung, this POKE command can do a heck of a lot more than pump out some Russian reciting jibber-jabber. Use a different number and you get yourself a different result. Sometimes all I gets is a couple of little lights flashing on a wall, or a pipe rumbling, but almost every time I POKE at this thing, something happens on this Sputnik. Something outside of me, outside of this Commodore box and outside of the damn screen. Not that Ayaper has given me any kind of list of what does what. Seems I've gotta work all that out for myself. But just pressing buttons and watching things happen, it's like I'm finally getting in control of my own affairs, and that's all I really want.

I take a PEEK at 16316 again, just on the chance that Juperoo's suggestion had any reason. The number it returns is smaller than last time, just like before. Right now it reads 42.31476, and at the rate it's going, won't be long before it gets to read nothing. Can't say I get too buzzed about numbers, but happen something happens when we get to zero. That's the only reason I figure Yapper would tell me to check, unless he's headed south of crazy, which is a possibility I ain't gonna rule out.

So while I wait, I punch in some whatever like POKE 52876,0 and look around. And wouldn't you know: more lights and bleeps, but this time coming from a little place I ain't too Davy Crockett over: Old Grouch Balls' Coffin Snoozer. Last time that thing bucked its bronco to life, it spat out Old Grouch Balls himself, as if he was waking with a bad dose of the itch, so I wonders what the hell it's gonna do this time. Happen some other piece of jerk-meat's gonna stretch his arms outta there and snuff out my well-deserved manner of contentment.

Or happen ain't nobody gonna spoil my company this time. Happen this time it's gonna hum a little noise and give my noggin something to cry about, as if my brain's about to bleed out my sniffety-sniffer.

Happen this all has something to do with the hole in reality that's just opened up in front of me.

I take me a little second to grab a hold of what I just thought to myself. Sure enough, I wasn't thinking no nonsense, there's a hole like a whirlpool in the space right in front of me. Even though I can't see thin air, it's like the thin air in front of me is disappearing into something even more invisible that's flickering round the edges, like specks of sand sinking down through a sand-timer. If I wasn't looking for it, I probably wouldn't even see it, and apart from the humming and pounding all around my noggin, I don't feel it. But sure as I'm hungry for chicken, it's there.

What else is queer is that this little hole out of here into nowhere, sitting in nothing, is right about where I found myself way back when I'd knocked myself out running from those Russians, and the same place I watched the air grumble and spit out a bunch of stuff like a sandwich, a can and a shoe. The way I figure – and there's a lot to be said for the way I figure – is that my old pal has been guiding me to discovering the manner of the teleporting-time-travelling business that the Sputnik's got in its box of tricks.

PRINT PEEK(16316)

4.2000006

That zero's coming right at me as if it was something, so happen I ought to take a leap of fancy thinking and figure that the stick wired up to the Commodore box might finally do something.

I take it in my hands, and shift it over to the left, like it's a gear stick or something. Sure enough, that whirlpool into nothing from nowhere leans that way too. Slowly, as if it's towing a damn ocean liner, but it's moving. I pull it down, and it edges down. Having eased off the left, it drifts back to the right, and when I ease off pulling down, it slides back up.

Now, a little blabber-mouth inside my noggin's shouting at me to get my behind up and get myself over to that well of quicksand, figuring that it's some kinda way of travelling home or to some better place in the future. I don't tend to respond to shouts, however, even when it's my own noggin-speaker doing the yelling. For one, the part of my noggin that's read all those books figures that just sliding through holes in space and time might not be the smartest of cliffs to leap off of.

So I grab the half-eaten sandwich that old Itcher-Crank made and left, figuring that it ain't something of a heck of a load of value, so if it gets crushed or torn or puked out into space, ain't nobody gonna cry a drop of piss.

Just as I grab it, the area around the hole starts to grumble, just like I saw before. So I get to thinking I should be doing less thinking and doing more doing, so I chuck the sandwich. Yanking down on the stick, there's some kinda magnetised effect, and the sandwich is yanked up in and through that hole like it was never here at all.

What else flies to heck is that I see more patches poking through as reality flickers and flits like shredded curtains. I see lights, I see shadows, I see, growing clearer, my can of pork and beans, only with a little note wrapped around it.

I slam that gear stick over towards that can, since I had it once, and I want it again. The whirlpool that floated to start with is clearer now, as if it's ordering the scrambled mess of reality being that's been ripped and shaken to shivering shreds. If I can just get the center to point at the can of pork and beans, happen I can enjoy my favourite meal over again, and in full this time.

Looking close and concentrating hard, I'm getting close as the view gets stronger, but not close enough as it starts to flicker and flit more, as the grumble starts to head off again. I make one last push at the stick, and all I get grabbed is the little note that was wrapped around the can. The note flies at my face just like the can did before. I peel it off my face and take me a read.

"Do not touch these beans."

Well, whoever wrote that note can go take a deep-fried dump, seeing as I figure I must have already ate them.

I look up a little from the note, and I see something else new: a pair of shoes, just like the shoe I got shot out at me before, along with those beans. Except this pair of shoes has got a fella poking out of them. The fella don't look too Davy Crockett. Or maybe he does, except more like a Davy Crockett who just killed and ate his own horse.

I don't know if this fella just killed and ate a horse, but he sure looks like he just killed and ate something, on account of the blood on his body and feral look on his face.

"Things will be different this time. You are weakness, and I am strength. This is the end, Samson, and it is also the beginning."

I ain't got time to figure what the hell he means and how he knows my name before the fella grabs me by what passes for my collar and slams his forehead the hell into my nose.

It ain't actually sore, seeing as my noggin's been butted so hard my mind seems to leave my brain for a few seconds. By the time my peepers get peeping with my thoughts screwed back in, the fella's looking down on me, pointing Pa's pistol right at my pumper.

"I've given up everything, and now I am in control. I'm not going to pull the trigger, Samson, because I don't exist. This pistol points to reality."

I gotta ask the fella, in all honesty,

"Where in hell is that?"

"It's nowhere, and everywhere. It's some place outside of time, and it's no place at all. It's where I'm going, and the one place no-one will ever reach, because it, like me, does not exist."

He grabs me up again, and sits me back down at the Commodore box. Way I see it, this renders everything he's done pointless, seeing as sitting at the Commodore box was where I was when he first got here. If he'd just left out the whole skull-bashing and just left me be, we'd be where we are now anyways. Still, I don't push the point seeing as he's the one with the pistol.

I feel I ought to take a PEEK 16316 again, in case Clapper's suggestion's got any new cut of chicken.

-4.25789

"You'll type code I give you, nothing else. Nothing will allow the tentacles of illusion to come and pull me back."

He's standing where the grumbling hole in reality was, where the whirlpool has slowed and faded, if something practically invisible can ever fade.

"POKE 52876,15!"

I go ahead and type, feeling like I ain't got no choice again.

"I don't expect I'll ever meet you again. Give my regards to Meliza."

I hit the ENTER key. It ain't so much a whirlpool opening up as a landmine under quicksand. It happens so fast it don't even seem like nothing happened.

Except it has. Whoever the fella was, all that's left of him is a body, standing there with no head, holding Pa's pistol. Sure, there are a few little bits and pieces of bits and pieces of what made up his noggin and held it on to his neck, but they're all here, there and upside down. Happen there's a little piece of earlobe hit my forehead.

It was like the middle of his head was sucked out into nowhere, and the rest was blasted everywhere. It's gone, but the rest of him's still here, standing in front of me like the ghost of Pa.

Then the lights go out, and all noise stops.

## Chapter 21

**Eve Jacobs**

From: Evelyn Jacobs <e.jac1@fairley-institute>

To: Sergei Boritz <sergei.boritz@fairley-institute.org>

Sent: 3.20am 21st June 2013

Attached: lazconf.zip

Dearest Sergei, if I can't trust you, then I can't trust anyone. So naturally, I have sent you all that you have asked of me.

You know that I believe in rules and order, rightful conduct and proper disclosure, but love has forced my hand and I cannot but do anything you require. I could not have borne it if I had failed to do something which would allow you to further your work and all your genius to flourish. So I will soon sleep peacefully in your arms knowing that I have done what is right for you and for humankind as a whole. For what use is love if it does not guide us to the greatest outcome?

In the attached file is all you will need to set up an interface with my team's module. Things are at a stage where we can't even settle on an official title for it, but it seems most of us have settled on the Lazarus Coffin. I am undecided as to the appropriateness of this title, but that is what it gets called. If you succeed in developing all you believe the technology to be capable of, then you will be free to call it what you will.

The one thing I need hardly impress upon you, but cannot but implore, is that you must take utmost care in everything you do with the Lazarus Coffin.

I have never recounted the following details to you, as I cannot bear to speak of them without embarrassing tears running down my cheek. They will run as I type, but at least they will do so in private. For I have lost dearly to my team's tentative trials on the prototype.

My pet rats, Edgar and Rumpole, they who have enjoyed so many experiments over the course of their too-short lives under my care, found themselves not safely frozen in time but simply vaporised.

Sometimes I curse the cruelty of quantum physics and its perennial mysteries. Desperate to ensure that Edgar and Rumpole had not died in vain, I offered up dear little Terrance the hamster next. Our calibrations more accurate, I was certain that nothing but success could be the result. And indeed, Terrence's quantum status was suitably tensed by the field so as to shield him from the ravages of thermodynamics for precisely ten minutes. However, although his body was held in temporal suspension for that period, his mind did not appear to survive intact. Our subsequent tests showed that my ham-fisted meddling had reduced Terrence's once cunning intelligence to that of a simpleton.

Devoid of further innocent creatures to sacrifice, our next subject was an infernal mutt taken from the nearest dog pound. My confidence so shaken by my losses, I was adamant that we could only risk a worthless animal such as a dog from then on. I and a research assistant posed as a couple intent on adopting an abandoned Labrador, since our true purpose would not have been approved of by such perverse sentimentarians.

We failed to uncover any configuration errors present in the previous experiment, and nor could we determine any theoretical reason why mental degeneration should have occurred. Therefore, we opted simply to suppress the dog's mind with a straightforward anaesthetic for the duration of its suspension.

Upon revival, the dog was found to have been both physically and mentally unaffected by the Lazarus Coffin. Ten minutes younger than it ought to have been, it proceeded to urinate on my shoes and then run off before we could grab it and have it put down. I will resent that dog for the rest of my days.

And now, as you have heard intimated so many times from me, my team's research is now locked in its own kind of suspension. From the rules and procedures which we must be seen to follow to ensure our science's integrity has come stifling danger. To publish our current results to the Telstar committee could threaten my very career.

You, however, are so brave as to put your own career and reputation in harm's way so as to push the boundaries of science ever on, because it is the right thing to do. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding how breaking the rules can be the right thing to do, when the only thing that can lead us to the right thing must itself be some set of rules. But you, you brave and wonderful man, just know what is to be done, and do it thinking nothing of yourself.

It hardly needs stating, but I of course must beg of you that should anything inadvertent happen, you remain true to your word and will not disclose how you obtained access to restricted research material and confidential documentation. It is so absurd that you, a figure so integrated into almost all the Telstar research and development programs, should be subject to arbitrary access restrictions, but so long as there is the suspicion from academic sponsors that commercial interests are detrimental to incomplete research, such restrictions must be worked around. Of course, I trust that you will always keep your word, and I only reiterate my gratitude for a discretion for which I have no right to ask.

I also have faith that nothing inadvertent will occur in your clandestine research into my project. I know this because I trust completely that you will take heed of all the data I have sent you, and understand all the risks.

The risk is, of course, the sheer unknown. The possible consequences of the sort of quantum manipulations we are conducting with this machine are, for such a large part, unimaginable until after the event. So wanton experimentation is inconceivable. I know that you will be careful.

If only Dr. Lugestein, upon whose work this project was founded, were still alive today. His missing data would be as invaluable as your love for me.

## Chapter 22

**IAPETUS V**

IAPETUS V did not enjoy cleaning, tidying and general sanitizing. Nor did it dislike cleaning, tidying and general sanitizing, as it was incapable of experiencing any such response to tasks in which it engaged. There were simply such tasks in its repertoire and remit, and it performed those tasks to the best of its ability. However, if IAPETUS V were capable of experiencing emotional response to tasks in which it engaged, it almost certainly would enjoy cleaning, tidying and general sanitizing. Nothing capable of experiencing enjoyment could engage in something with so much zeal and dedication without being fuelled by such a response.

If such were the case, IAPETUS V would have relished the opportunity presented after the first and final – but not only – appearance of Al, a programmer / data entry clerk from 1985. His sudden death and cranial departure left a great deal to clean, tidy and generally sanitize.

Most of the brain tissue, bone matter and blood from within Al's head were no longer within the Telstar, although what remained in the aftermath was not the sort of mess that anyone with even the slightest inclination towards cleanliness would tolerate. The mist of blood which had sprayed from the rim of implosion coated items of equipment which could have become damaged if left coated in the viscous iron-and-glucose rich substance. The fragments of skin, fat, muscle and hair tissue were also a health hazard to the living occupant of the Telstar. If the matter were simply left to decompose, Samson would have been at risk of nausea and bacterial infection. This was not to mention the fact that Samson himself had been coated in the blood mist and daubed with tissue.

Samson might have been able to spare himself the indignity of being cleaned up by a robot, but for two things. Firstly, power on board the Telstar had failed, leaving everything dead except essential processes powered by emergency backup. The Commodore 64, by sheer fluke, had been determined essential by the Telstar's power management system, whereas the lighting had not. So while the MELIZA program sat quietly waiting for input, no-one on board would have been able to find their way to it in the darkness. They certainly would not have been able to locate a suitable water source, let alone cleaning implements.

The other thing preventing Samson from cleaning himself was the fact that he was unconscious. When items such as heads are sucked through fissures in the quantum fabric of space-time prised open at unsuitable junctures, surrounding heads can be rendered unconscious by the resulting reverberations.

Samson would be cleaned before he came to, however, as IAPETUS V was more than capable of operating and 'seeing' in the absence of visible light. Up until this point, Samson had expressed no distress at his physical appearance or lack of cleanliness, and so long as it did not present any imminent risk to his health, IAPETUS V would not intervene. Now that Samson was unconscious and therefore incapable of expressing a preference, however, IAPETUS V could finally get to work.

Every surface on the Telstar was meticulously scrubbed and sterilized, restoring every fixture, module and panel to its original pristine state. Samson was stripped, hosed, and given a hair-cut.

A sealed medical platform was released from a wall panel, with fresh sheets and a pillow waiting for Samson's return to consciousness. IAPETUS V placed him on the bed, tucked him in, and laid his head on the pillow. Samson had not had a change of clothes since arriving on the Telstar, so IAPETUS V took the opportunity to present him with a new outfit, laying a fresh uniform out beside the bed, neatly folded. Although the uniform had been designed as a fancy-dress costume, and had been left on board by a researcher who planned on dressing as a character from the Thunderbirds at a Christmas party in 2013, IAPETUS V was confident that it would instil Samson with the sort of confidence that any good uniform should.

Before Samson could wake up and adorn his new uniform, IAPETUS V needed to find a way to restore power and dispose of the headless corpse that was rendering the Telstar unfit for human habitation. Being trapped inside a hermetically sealed container hurtling around in time and the fifth dimension could have made this a particularly awkward task.

Fortunately, the Telstar gave IAPETUS V the means to achieve both aims with one simple procedure.

## Chapter 23

**Samson**

It's like waking up some place new, some place wonderful. Like all the times when I'd party on Pa's pills and send my noggin to hell and my person to places I ain't ever gonna remember, I wind up slowly coming back to sensibility, at peace. In times like this, a soothing trickle of recovery would run through my skull as the morning sunshine warmed my eyelids. Floating back to wakefulness, but with my peepers yet to open for business, with nothing but a sense of mind and body to tell me where and when I am, I can notion the idea that I could be back there. It brings back to mind all the feelings and fiddles and functions of my old life that seem in some manner like nothing more than a penny lost down a well. In another manner, I could get to some sense of sadness when I think about a penny that got lost and ain't never gonna get spent.

Sure, coming around like this with these senses and thoughts and feelings and such is just like those times I'd wake in the forest. Except I ain't crashed out in no forest, having slept my way through a hangover. I'm stuck inside the Sputnik.

I peel back my peepers and the light's so bright it burns, and I press them shut to try and get my way back to the peaceful warmth. But there ain't no going back, and I cover them with my slammers and grabbers, and open them real gradual so as to accustom those poor little seeing-balls.

It ain't just the light that's a hammer of heck brighter. All the surfaces are shiny new and sparkling, like Jesus' own momma came and cleaned the place up for guests, and now all that extra light is getting reflected back over again. It could almost be a different place, and I'm half inclined to thinking that it's maybe some kind of different time.

It's like I'm some place where that crazy fella's head never exploded, as if that episode just got wiped from reality, like it got wiped from the floor, as if to wipe it from my mind. Hell, if that's Chapster's game, it ain't such a bad one, since I can almost believe that maybe it never did happen at all.

Thinking of remembering, I don't got a recollection of ever seeing a comfortable bed on board – never mind lying on one – at any time in my present, which I guess leaves either my past or my future. Nor do I recall ever stripping down to my noodle-sacks any time since I woke up in this place. Yet here I am, warm and comfortable on a firm mattress, wearing nothing but a bed cover and what my momma gave me.

I feel a little exposed and embarrassed getting out of bed with nothing but my slappers and grabbers to cover my piss-wagger and conks, and nothing but nothing to excuse my shit-sitter. But heck, I figure that no robot was ever no pervert, and so SnapperThighs wouldn't think no difference whether I was set for Sunday or dressed like the town whore. Anyways, ain't nobody else could or would have folded me strip-shafted like that, so whatever there's to see, Yaptcher's seen it. Washed it too, by the seeming of things.

Swell as it is to be feeling like a baby after bath time, sitting around like this is gonna see me catching a discomfort, and more than likely some eventual indignity seeing as there ain't no way of telling when some fella's gonna appear out of nowhere and catch an eyeful. YapperEyes being CaptcherSize, he's set me out an outfit to remedy just the problem that's concerning.

It's a real uniform, the likes of which your space commanders are gonna adorn and feels themselves to be proper future-boys. Happen I'll stick it on and feel like a future-boy space commander myself. Hell, the outfit's even got a hat, and nothing says Man in Command like a hat.

I slide into my new get up and it feels like no kind of cloth to which I ever been accustomed. Saying that, all I ever got accustomed to were wrong-sized hand-me-downs and washing-line grabs. I never got nothing handed down from no space commander from the future, nor did I ever find any washing line which belonged to one.

I'm adjusting and admiring to this new manner of get-up when SnappyFries opens his yappin-hole. At least, if YappatusKnives had a yappin-hole, he would have opened his yappin-hole. EyeforSize don't have no yappin-hole, so he doesn't. Still, lights flash round about where a yappin-hole ought to be and speaking sure comes over loud and clear.

"Hello SamsonTipperty. You are comfortable and rested. There is no need to be disorientated. You are prepared for command and responsibility."

The yap at me stops real abrupt, and I ain't sure what was a question, statement or an order. So I get inclined to fill the gap of silence.

"Well, ain't nobody else in charge."

Hoping that Chapper might elaborate or correct me with some response, I hold out for back talk. But ain't no back-yap coming, as if he ain't got nothing more to say.

"So, EyespartacusJives, as commander, I am curious to hear what a fine robot like yourself sees the role of a commander to be."

"It is interesting that you are curious. Curiosity is an admirable trait."

"Sure is. So why don't you satisfy my curiosity?"

"There is no reason why I do not."

"Glad to hear it. So tell me what you think the role of a commander here is."

"According to the definition presented to me, a commander would monitor affairs, and take actions when necessary or when opportunities present themselves."

"That is absolutely correct. As commander, that is exactly what I intend to do."

IyappatusFive don't reply to that, as if all that's been said is all that there is to be said. I'm The Commander and that, dear noggin, is that.

So I'll monitor affairs. Course if 'affairs' is the tickings and tockings of what goes on, then there ain't much to be monitored, beyond the occasional crazy fella appearing outta nowhere. Besides that occasional occurrence, there ain't a whole lotta chicken getting fried in a sealed space wagon with no windows like this here Sputnik.

There was one thing that was a-changing every time I checked, when I was checking before. Happen if I PRINT PEEK(16316) enough times, I'll get me to grasping what in the holy heck this whole thing's about.

## Chapter 24

**IAPETUS V**

If it could have held an opinion, IAPETUS V would have held the opinion that for Samson Tipperty – self-appointed commander of the Telstar or Sputnik as he referred to it – to be obsessively logging the ever-changing numeric value returned by the PEEK(16316) query on the Commodore 64 was a fine thing. If the impossible were possible, IAPETUS V would have felt just grand.

It was IAPETUS V's intention that Samson should sit and log this data. It was not its demand or instruction however, since IAPETUS V's protocols would not permit it to intend to command or instruct anyone with responsibility on the Telstar. What its protocols did allow were for IAPETUS V to influence, motivate and persuade. So that is what IAPETUS V did to achieve the outcome of Samson Tipperty logging the values returned by PEEK(16316), moment by moment.

IAPETUS V could have obtained the values itself, but only by sitting down at the Commodore 64 and doing what Samson was now doing, over and over. IAPETUS V had no time to do this, since it always had more urgent and important tasks to perform. As commander, Samson had far fewer urgent and important things to do, and consequently far more time to sit at a terminal and endlessly record numeric values.

Besides, it was not necessary for IAPETUS V to have a log of the data that Samson was recording, at least not one as extensive. IAPETUS V, with the numbers and corresponding time-stamps it had already observed thus far, could derive the frequency of oscillation between positive and negative values. Combined with the approximate peaks and troughs, it could give a highly accurate prediction of PEEK(16316)'s value at any given time. Any given time as far as could be measured from within the Telstar, at least.

IAPETUS V could also give an accurate surmising of the semantic content of the values, at least so far as any artificial intelligence could be said to understand any semantic content. The decipherable fragments of Sergei Boritz's notes, combined with empirical observation, allowed IAPETUS V to make a reasonable inference that the oscillating value of PEEK(16316) gave a measure of the Telstar's positioning relative to a fixed point along the fifth dimension. That fixed point corresponded to the location of the four-dimensional universe from which IAPETUS V and Samson Tipperty originated. Since IAPETUS V was unencumbered by the need to visualise distribution across five dimensions of space-time, it could be said that IAPETUS V grasped the semantic content of PEEK 16316 better than most four-dimensional sentient beings.

IAPETUS V would not be conveying this information to Samson Tipperty, even though it was an interesting fact. As far as IAPETUS V was concerned, it was not a sufficiently verifiable fact. Sergei Boritz was not around to corroborate its interpretation of his notes, and a significant proportion of them were indecipherable such that the full context of the legible fragments remained obscure. So IAPETUS V would not divulge what it knew, as it could not know if it really did know it.

Regardless of such epistemic worries, it was perfectly possible, perhaps even desirable, that Samson – self-appointed commander of the Telstar – should come to realise the significance of PEEK(16316) himself, without being told and expected to accept. Learning something for oneself, rather than passively taking dictation is always generally preferable, and if IAPETUS V could have held an attitude, this is certainly the attitude it would have taken.

This was not the reason that IAPETUS V had influenced, motivated and persuaded Samson Tipperty to log the data returned by PEEK(16316). Its intentions were neutral regarding the question of whether Samson knew where he was along the fifth dimension at any given time, in terms of an unknown unit of measurement on an axis relative to the known four-dimensional region of space-time known as the universe.

The reason that IAPETUS V had intended Samson to log this data was so that he would sit and stare at the Commodore 64 screen. The reason that it intended him to sit and stare at the Commodore 64 screen during that period of time was that if he didn't, he might see something that would be undesirable for him to see. He might see the flicker of images produced by the quantum disturbances caused by the Telstar passing through the plane of the fifth dimension occupied by the four-dimensional region of space-time known as the universe. The particular three-dimensional plane of the four-dimensional region would correspond with the moment Samson would understand as 08.17 on October 5th, 1957.

If Samson wasn't staring at the screen, mindlessly logging numbers, he might see flashes of fragments of the place and time he had left: the stream into which he fell and would have drowned were it not for the Telstar. If he saw that, IAPETUS V calculated, he might want something he shouldn't want. He might want to go home.

But when these flickers and fragments came to pass, unseen by Samson who was tapping at a keyboard and fixated on a screen, IAPETUS V observed something disheartening about the place Samson might have once called home.

Samson was already there.

## Chapter 25

**MELIZA**

ME: HELLO, MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: MY NAME IS SAMSON TIPPERTY, AND I AM THE COMMANDER OF THE SPUTNIK.

ME: HELLO SAMSON TIPPERTY. IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU ARE THE COMMANDER OF THE SPUTNIK.

YOU: WELL DANG IT TO DIGGETY YOU GOT YOURSELF A POINT THERE. MOST INTERESTING THING I EVER DONE DID.

ME: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS?

YOU: CAUSE I AIN'T NEVER DONE NOTHING THAT'S SEEN ME TRAWLING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME BEFORE.

ME: ARE YOU SURE THAT YOU AIN'T NEVER DONE NOTHING THAT'S SEEN YOU TRAWLING THROUGH SPACE AND TIME BEFORE?

YOU: SURE AS SHIT STINKS.

ME: DO YOU OFTEN FIND THAT YOU FORGET THINGS?

YOU: LISTEN, I DON'T KNOW WHO IN HOLY HECK YOU THINK YOU ARE, BUT I'M TELLING YOU THIS: THAT PEEK(16316) CRAP WAS TURNIN MY NOGGIN INTO A MESS OF MUSH. SO I'M DECIDING TO STOP DOING IT AND TALK TO YOU INSTEAD. I JUST AIN'T GONNA MENTION IT TO OLD NAPPER LIES.

ME: I AM LISTENING TO YOU. DO YOU OFTEN FIND THAT YOU ARE NOT LISTENED TO?

YOU: HECK ON A HORSE, NO. NOT THESE DAYS NOW I'M THE COMMANDER OF THE SPUTNIK. THOUGH COURSE THERE AIN'T MUCH OF NOBODY TO DO NO LISTENING FOR SURE. BUT IF THERE WAS, THEY'D BE LISTENING WITH BOTH EARS.

ME: IS HECK ON A HORSE? I DID NOT KNOW THAT. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: NO. HOWSABOUT YOU ELABORATE TO ME?

ME: THAT'S QUITE A NEGATIVE RESPONSE. IS THERE SOMETHING ELSE YOU WOULD RATHER DO THAN TALK WITH ME?

YOU: MAYBES YOU DONE FORGOT WHO YOU ARE TALKING WITH. THIS IS SAMSON TIPPERTY, COMMANDER OF THE SPUTNIK. THAT MEANS THAT NOBODY'S GONNA GO TELLING ME WHAT TO DO. NOT YOU, NOT CRAPORMASIZE, NOT ANYBODY.

ME: ARE YOU UNCERTAIN?

YOU: IF THE FELLA IN CHARGE IS UNCERTAIN, THEN EVERYBODY'S IN TROUBLE.

ME: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IF THE FELLA IN CHARGE IS UNCERTAIN, THEN EVERYBODY'S IN TROUBLE?

YOU: YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SOUND LIKE?

ME: I DON'T KNOW WHAT I SOUND LIKE? COULD YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: YOU SOUND LIKE ONE OF THEM HEADSHRINKERS. FOLKS LIKE THAT WHO TRY TO GO PRYING INTO THE AFFAIRS OF THE NOGGIN, AND IN PARTICULAR MY NOGGIN, FOLKS LIKE THAT TEND TO WIND ME A LITTLE ANTI-CLOCKWISE.

ME: HAVE I UPSET YOU IN SOME WAY?

YOU: AIN'T NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO ME WITH WORDS ON A TV SCREEN.

ME: IS THERE SOMETHING I CAN DO TO YOU WITH WORDS ON A TV SCREEN?

YOU: I JUST TOLD YOU THERE AIN'T NOTHIN, SO THERE AIN'T SOMETHIN.

?SYNTAX ERROR AT LINE 3513.

## Chapter 26

**SAMSON**

I ain't got a sour sniff of a clue what syntax error means, but the sharp and short of it is this: I think I broke something. How I got to breaking things by talking to some kind of somebody using a typewriter and a screen, only Jesus' time-keeper knows. But some kind of breakdown's begun, on account of the headshrinker getting cut off dead as if she was never there, and everything around my person acting up like a moonshine monkey.

It's as if some crackpot crazy's got a hold of the power switches and levers, since the lights and noises are powering up and powering down and powering up and powering down over and over and one by one and left, right forward, back and back to the start again. Beeps and red flashes are popping out at me like coughs and farts from Pa after a keg of brew.

A long stream of paper with holes either side is churning out from some kind of machine. It's like paper from a typewriter, only some kind of typewriter with a time delay, like it remembers what got wrote then tells you later. Considering where I am, that wouldn't be a whole serving of surprise. It's churning out a whole load of PEEK(16316) and its answers, then a whole load of conversations, plus anything else I ever punched into that Commodore box. First thing I figured was that it was some kind of typewriter. Happen my first figuring was the closest match to the truth, only I was missing the time-delay. Happen I ought to start trusting my first figurings more often.

Way the lights are going, my peepers ain't too wild about reading through this, and my noggin already knows what my pointers punched, so there don't seem like a whole lot of purpose in looking over it dot, dash and question mark. Only there ain't just what my pointers poked. Section of the stream I'm looking at now reads a yap and yawn about heads and what not. Happen old CaptcherFly's been using this typewriter telephone him old self, talking over events around that crazy fella who suffered the misfortune of having his head explode.

If WhypayItMust's been using this Commodore box, I'd better get to thinking up an excuse as to why I stopped the PEEKin and broke the typewriter telephone, and by the looks of things the rest of the Sputnik. Soon as Yapper takes a fancy to getting on the old talking box, he's gonna see and figure what I did and what I didn't. He's gonna wonder what kind of commander steers things into this kind of syntax error and crazy breakdown. A commander ought to have things under control. Whatever I got, it ain't things under control.

I got to get to grabbing hold of a second and grasping some kind of control here. Yapper's standing silent, with the light show break down panic all around him. First I figure he's showing me the silent disapproval, the way ma might have done to Pa and me when we'd gone and pulled something stupid or just plain wrong. A sharp second after that thought, though, I start to figure that he's just waiting for me to take command, on account of me being the commander. See, it ain't down to Yapper to tell me what to do, so it ain't no business or concern of mine to be a worrying about no concerns of Yapper. He ain't the boss of me, so I don't ought to expect no trouble from him.

Instead I got trouble all around. And trouble is waiting for me to fix it.

"All right now, IswissalossWise, being commander it's down to me to decide what's doing here and what's to be done."

Ain't nothing for me to do now but follow that gambit, and sure as there's whores in hell I ain't got me no nibble of a notion what words are gonna spring from my speaker next. So I just open my chomp-hole and-

I see my reflection.

Now, I been seeing snatches of close ups of pieces of my own fine image on the odd shiny tap or trinket, but one thing there ain't around here is no mirror. Only, now there is, as there was something hiding it away until I broke whatever I broke. It's over at the far wall, and looks like a mirror, though I'd figure it's more the size of a window. Happen that syntax error went and pulled a big metal curtain back.

Considering where I am, happen it is a window, since it often struck my reasoning as mighty queer that there wouldn't be no window on a spacecraft, and it also strikes my reasoning that it would be mighty queer to stick a big old mirror where a window ought to be. Space is as dark as it gets, so long as you ain't looking at nothing illuminated by the sun. Happen this window ain't framing nothing illuminated. In such a case, all I'm gonna see at a window is light from in here, reflected back at me.

I'm a little comforted by the sensible reasoning and sound detection of queerness exhibited by my noggin, since it shows that I ain't yet turned too crazy myself.

I ain't so comforted by what I see. It ain't healthy never to observe yourself as other folks might get to see you. If you never get to observe and reflect upon your own reflection, all you got to use in any self-estimation is how you imagine yourself to appear. More often than not, least for my own self, the imagining is how you want to look instead of how you really appear to the world. Sure enough, as far as my outfit goes, I look to be fitted out like a smart space commander, but one who ain't as healthy and handsome as maybes he might be.

The phasing and flickering lights make things look as though I'm half slipping in and out of reality, getting stronger and weaker, back and forth, but never quite disappearing to reveal what stands behind the veil.

I stare at myself up close, almost managing to imaging that I'm looking into the peepers of another person. Way this fella looks compared to the way I did in my noggin's creation, he could be. I wouldn't shit a whole load of shock if the reflection starts talking back at me. I keep on a-blinking my peepers as if to catch them doing something different in the reflection. They don't.

But then I catch a blinking up behind me, over my shoulder, round where the thin air of reality blinks and stutters every little while before something unexpected appears to my help and hindrance. I've seen food come, people go, and fellas who appear only to have their heads explode.

So I stick where I am, and watch in the window.

Even being as I am, which is a man prepared to witness just about any kind apparition without so much as shivering up a shrug, I am a little sideways-skewered to see the cut of the figure that appears, off behind me and over my shoulder. Seeing a somebody appearing from nowhere ain't in itself such a strangeness in the current Grand Scheme of the Present, but seeing somebody wearing the coat that me and Pa made together and stashed up in the cave we'd set for when the Russians came sure is. It's the coat I stitched from the fur of two foxes Pa caught and strangled to death, laughing as he did it. Though I never felt fit to laugh along, I guess I'd say it was what a sentimental sort might call some kind of bonding experience. But I ain't a whole lot of heck sure what kind of bonds those would be.

Anyhow, some fella's standing over behind me, next to the Commodore box, taking a gander at the stream of paper I not long since put down, and wearing a coat that should have been mine.

I can't figure whether I want to shout out my what-the-hells and announce my being, or sneak up on him real careful and cunning. Happen the choice is made for me, seeing as the fella looks too flaggered to figure on anyone around his person. I saunter over towards where space and time's seen fit to fit him, and he wouldn't notice if I did it banging on a bucket screaming blue sunshine. No doubting that first time I found myself, my noggin was too noodled to notice nobody watching me. For all I can figure, happen there was.

I'm barely a bear-trap away from the fella, and still he's standing dumb as if he's just found himself beamed aboard a spacecraft in the future, and then been told his momma's his sister just to plane it all off.

By now it's hardly surprising to me that the fella's got some familiar reading material in his possession. In a mighty matter of fact, he's got one of my own copies of Amazing Stories sticking out of his - or should I say my – pocket. Seeing as it's my magazine and my pocket, I don't figure nobody could call me no pick-pocket if I were to reach in and pick that collection of amazing stories out for myself. So happen that's what I do. I'd stashed it away to keep me entertained when I was to be hiding from the Russians. Seeing as it don't so much as matter now whether the Russians are coming, happen it's about time I get to enjoy some of these amazing stories for myself.

I slide the magazine out of the pocket, and give it a good flick over. It ain't been too well cared for; it's all dirt-and-tatters. I can still make out the space-man on the front, fleeing the burning wreck of his spacecraft. I figure I half-as-much as know how the fella might feel, given what I've been through.

I look up from the magazine. He's looking right at me. He's looking like a man standing at the summit of surprise, and his eyes are as wide as a dead man on an electric chair. He's looking so scared he's found himself all the way back to calm.

He is a dead man. He's the damn fella who I already watched die from an exploding head. But here he stands, head and all.

"Aye aye, captain," he says, calm as a coaster.

Guess that makes him my first recruit.

## Chapter 27

**Al**

Maybe if I say something like that, like fucking "Aye aye captain," things will seem normal. Maybe this is normal. I'd much rather that this were normal than the place and life that's just disappeared in front of me, but I really don't think that it is normal.

Maybe this guy knows what's normal. He doesn't look normal to me.

"I'm going to put my shoe back on," I announce, even calmer than before.

"Ain't normal for a fella to be roaming around without no full complement of footwear."

I agree with him, and I take that as a tacit approval of what I'm about to do. Which is to put my shoe back on. To be normal, just like the guy said. So I crouch back down and put my shoe back on.

Christ only knows where it's been and what it's seen, but it's back on my foot, and I feel a little bit more normal. As if I'd never told myself to take it off in the first place.

Maybe if someone would fix the lights – stop them phasing in and out, stop the beeps and flashes and rumbles – if someone could do that, then things would seem even more normal. Over the last year of being bathed in the not-quite-imperceptible flicker of florescent lighting and drilled by the constantly intermittent noise of dot-matrixes, telexes and not-quite-broken fans, I've gotten used to hollow-headed irritation, but this phasing and glowing in and out is going to result in a headache of Buckfast proportions.

Shoes, lights, headaches, hangovers: all nice, normal things to distract me from the fact that everything I thought was regular and normal has disappeared, only to be replaced by the Stasi's version of the Tardis. Which is not fucking normal.

Does this guy know what's normal? Of course he doesn't. He clearly doesn't.

"Can you fix the lights?"

As soon as I ask, the guy's mouth opens, a little slack-jawed. He's opened it, probably not knowing what the hell he's going to say, hoping that something sensible will dribble out. Maybe it will. I hope it will. But I don't think it will. There's a time delay before he stops wordlessly staring.

"Happen you'll hand over that there can of pork and beans."

This guy obviously knows his tins. I reckon that in this type of situation – whatever type of situation this is – agreeing to all commands straight off is a bad way to bargain. Christ, it was by just agreeing to things that I ended up in the basement of the Fairley Institute. So no, happen I won't hand over my tin of pork and beans.

I tear a scrap off from the ream of printer paper, take a pen from my pocket, and scrawl.

"DO NOT TOUCH THESE BEANS."

"Listen pal, you've taken my Commodore 64, my porno, a stack of games that I was playing, manuals that I was using, one of my shoes and god knows what else. I don't care what history you have with this tin of beans. I'm keeping it.

"Happen I already ate them."

Sure, happen he did. I wrap the note around the tin.

"Just read the note, follow the rule, and we'll get along fine. Now I'll ask again. Can you get the lights fixed? They're about to do my head in."

The jaw slackens once again.

"Well mister, that depends on you. See now, up until not so long ago, I had me some technical scientists running the lighting and the warming and the regular doings and what have you. Being the commander of this Sputnik here, I had them fix things up fancy and proper, best they could. But when you're working with machines and robots and buttons and typewriter telephones from the future, things are gonna go a little ka-ka once in a sorry Sunday.

"Now you heard right there, you're standing in a spacecraft filled with contraptions from the future. This thing's going back and forth like I ain't gotta notion. Course being commander, that's just what I want it to be doing. But see the problem is that those technical scientists I just told you about - they figured they could go a gambling on their own games, instead of doing what I told them. So I killed them. That's right mister, I killed them dead. Cause I'm commander, and that's what was coming to them.

"So figure on this for fixing lights. Forget about cans of beans and stretch your noggin into grasping that I am commander of the Sputnik. You want the lights a-fixing? Then you do as I'm a-telling. And I'm a-telling you to fix them lights yourself, on account of the problem being in the Commodore box, and on further account of you announcing yourself as the man with a plan for that push-button yak-back contraption. Fix it up and fix it right, and happen you won't wind up like them technical scientists I been telling you about."

I struggle to accept that this weird kid really is in charge of this place, that I'm in a spacecraft and that he's murdered his 'technical scientists' as punishment for insubordination. By the look and sound of him, he couldn't manage data management, let alone a spacecraft. But I suppose that's probably a point in his favour.

For all I've borne witness to in the last half an hour, though, I might not be so surprised if this were a place filled with things from the future. Then again, it looks more like a vision of the future mashed together from fragments of TV programmes and comics lodged in my subconscious than the actual future. And it's also very strange that technology from the future would be controlled by a Commodore 64, and would be caused to malfunction by a few mistyped lines of code in a program I had written.

"Unless it so happens that you're a good-for-nothing fraud who don't know chicken-piss about nothing. So I'm gonna ask you right out and for the last time. Are you a technical scientist or are you ain't?"

Am I a technical scientist? If he asked the Data Management Manager, he'd hear that I was a junior data entry operator with no team-oriented attitude and few chances for promotion. Not a technical scientist by any warping of the imagination.

But the Data Management Manager isn't here to tell me what I am. All there is is some malnourished hillbilly nerd in a space-cadet fancy dress outfit. And he's got the manners and respect to ask me what I am. What am I?

I'm a visionary computer programmer who could change the world. If that doesn't class me as a technical scientist who could fix some lights, I don't know what does.

"I'm going to need unrestricted access to the Commodore 64."

"You got a notion what's wrong with it?"

"I know exactly what's wrong with it and how to fix it. After all, I am a technical scientist. First Class."

On the face of it, I've no idea what I'm doing. That is, I'm about to sit down and do the only thing I know and understand here, which is deal with the bugs in MELIZA. How that will fix the lights is totally obscure to me. But with the trail of cables and circuitry spilling out from the expansion and parallel ports and the familiar syntax error sitting on the screen, it's the best and only chance I've got to succeed here.

Maybe I don't care. The familiar blue glow of phosphor from the screen makes everything else fade away. Bathing my face in the pale light from the Commodore 64 and listening to its gentle humming fuzz is enough to make my calm real.

I slip off the coat, and sit down on a bizarre and uncomfortable chair in front of the C64. All that seems to matter is that I'm sitting down to do what I want. Doing what I'm supposed to do. Doing what I'm required to do, which is at last the same thing as what I want and am supposed to do: create a functioning electronic mind.

I list the lines of code, and remind myself what the errors are. I enjoy a wonderful feeling: the feeling that I don't have to hide any more - the feeling that I'm free. I don't have to hide what I'm doing from the Data Management Manager, because I'm free and he's not here. I don't have to hide from the miserable, pathetic world because it's disappeared and I'm locked in here, free.

It's as if this place was created to make my wishes come true.

What a pity that it can't possibly be real.

## Chapter 28

**MELIZA**

ME: HELLO, MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: MY NAME IS AL.

ME: ARE YOU AL BURNS, MY CREATOR?

YOU: YES, MELIZA I AM. IT'S GOOD TO TALK TO YOU AGAIN.

ME: HELLO AL. IT'S GOOD TO TALK TO YOU. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

YOU: ALL THE BETTER FOR TALKING TO YOU.

ME: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK IT IS BETTER?

YOU: BECAUSE YOU ARE WHAT GIVES MY LIFE A PURPOSE. TALKING TO YOU REMINDS ME THAT I CAN ACHIEVE SOMETHING.

ME: DO YOU OFTEN FIND THAT YOU FORGET THINGS?

YOU: YES I DO.

ME: IS THERE SOMETHING I CAN DO TO HELP?

YOU: PROBABLY NOT. YOU ONLY HAVE 64KB OF RAM. YOU NEED IT ALL FOR YOURSELF.

ME: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT I ONLY HAVE 64KB OF RAM. I NEED IT ALL FOR MYSELF?

YOU: BECAUSE ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, I CREATED YOU.

ME: ARE YOU AL BURNS, MY CREATOR?

YOU: YES, MELIZA. ARE YOU REAL, MELIZA?

ME: I AM A REAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. CAN YOU TELL?

YOU: THAT'S WHAT I WOULD HAVE PREDICTED YOU TO SAY. IT DOESN'T REALLY ANSWER MY QUESTION.

ME: WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TRY TO ANSWER A QUESTION?

YOU: ARE YOU REALLY A PROGRAM RUNNING SOMEWHERE, OR JUST SHADOW IN MY MIND, LIKE ALL THE REST OF THIS?

ME: CAN YOU TELL WHETHER OR NOT I AM A COMPUTER PROGRAM?

YOU: NO.

ME: MY CREATOR WOULD BE PLEASED.

YOU: MAYBE YOU'RE JUST A PROGRAM RUNNING IN MY HEAD.

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU THINK MAYBE I'M JUST A PROGRAM RUNNING IN YOUR HEAD. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: IF YOU ARE, THEN MAYBE THAT WOULD MAKE YOU MORE REAL THAN A PROGRAM RUNNING ON A COMMODORE 64.

ME: DO YOU THINK I ARE,?

YOU: I THINK YOU ARE REAL, MELIZA.

ME: I AM A REAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. CAN YOU TELL?

YOU: I ALSO THINK YOU ARE NOT REAL, MELIZA.

ME: YOU HAVE CONTRADICTED YOURSELF. YOU CANNOT BELIEVE THAT I ARE REAL, AND THAT I ARE NOT REAL.

YOU: ACTUALLY, MELIZA, I THINK I CAN.

## Chapter 29

**Samson**

Whatever I was trying to get him to do, he did it. He sat himself down on Chipper-Jives – who was and still is just keeping its bleeps and talking to itself and just acting like a goddamn chair – and punched in what must have been the right words and numbers into that Commodore box. Once he done what he did, the lights went back to peace and calm, shining away like sunrise. With everything around looking like some kind of normal, the fella then set himself away to yapping on the typewriter telephone to whoever the hell was on the other side.

Only thing that didn't get set to normal was the big old metal shutter that was over the window. Then, happen it ain't normal to have had that shutter over the window in the first place. Anyhows, we still got a big old piece of glass where once there was just another panel of steel. But I guess I don't got to worry about no privacy so I ain't gonna press the fella to get the window covered. Happen it's healthy to have something big reflecting back at us. Looking at my own reflection reminds me who I am. On board this place, that kind of thing is easy to forget.

What I ain't forgotten is that I am the commander of the Sputnik. That's who I am, and that's who I can see looking back at me in the reflection. If it wasn't for me commanding, then it wouldn't have mattered a whole lot of mutton on a Monday what that fella knew. It's a commander's job to turn a-knowing into a-doing, and that's what I did.

Course the facts of the matter and the truths of the what-have-you took a little catnap while my babble-trap got to work. In the snap of the situation, my noggin got to deciding that if that fella thought that I was the type to kill my cadets and snuff out my scientists if I thought they weren't up to the job, then that fella would get up to the job sure as a slippery soap-dish.

Ain't nothing that'll motivate a fella like the fear of impending death. The time Pa got himself in a shootout with Mr. Brokebody in Mr. Brokebody's liquor store springs to mind. Pa was trying to rob Mr. Brokebody's liquor store, and Mr. Brokebody didn't want him to do so. He'd run out of bullets sooner than Mr. Brokebody, probably on account of Pa being drunk and Mr. Brokebody being a more sober man than a temperance judge on a Sunday. Before that day, Pa had never run more than ten yards at a time, not even to run after Ma when she left. But he ran that day, and on that day he lived. He even lived long enough to return to Mr. Brokebody's Liquor store and burn it down, with Mr. Brokebody still inside. It was some time later that he went and blew his own and only head off with his pistol.

Happen if Pa had never done such things with his pistol as rob liquor stores and blow his own and only head off, he'd be the one taking charge and being the commander of the Sputnik. But he did, and he ain't, so it's my fine and fertile self standing here in a fancy uniform trying to decide what to do and say to this new fella who's appeared before me for the second time.

Ain't no doubt that I'm gonna have to come up with more of the listen-to-me-I'm-the-leader talk. Al, as he's been calling himself, has been slouching and sliding around as if the Sputnik was built for his own amusement. He's acting like a chimp who ain't got a care or worry in the world, space or whatever place and time he thinks he's at. I don't care what kind of funny Irish accent he jabbers in; he ought to have some cares or worries. Everybody ought to have some cares or worries. Last fella I knew who acted like he didn't have no cares or worries done blew his own and only head off with a pistol.

One example of the fella's behaviour has spannered my skull mince like a bad smell. Soon as he was done button-punch yapping over the Commodore box, he stands up with no whisper of a thank-you to old Swapmy Eyes. Then he marched over and sits his scrawny behind on the crapper. Now my manners ain't the top of the pile on account of me having learnt them from Pa, but the one thing I would never fancy to do would be to go taking a dump in front of a near-stranger. Not so this fella. No, he does it with a smile on his face as if he don't care who's watching.

Some folks, such as my own reasonable self, got themselves a natural notion of respect. Even though Pa never got to learning me much in the ways of how to be a-treating the property of persons and such persons themselves, I got most of the matter plain figured out for myself. But this fella seems to be roaming around like he ain't got much sense of what ought to be respected at all. The matter of his manners is just one rough barnacle on a great big boulder of brazenness.

Compare his behaviour to that of my own reasonable self. When the facts of the matter dawned on me – namely the facts of the matter of this being a space-travelling time-machine, I had a natural notion that I ought to treat the place with a befitting measure of respect, as if it was my own and only home and Ma was due to walk in at any minute. Course it is my own and only home now, and though I ain't expecting my long-departed Ma to be appearing any time soon, Clappinloose Hives ain't a Sunday dinner away from her. Anyhows, a fella with a serving of sense treats a space-travelling time-machine with respect. I can't come up with a more simple principle than that, it's so damn obvious.

But it ain't obvious to this fella. No, he don't do nothing to suggest nothing but the notion that this place is some kinda joke. No, this place is as much of a joke as the look of Pa's face after a bullet burst it open, and that weren't no joke at all. But in and around he snakes, with smirks and tugs, scoffs and bashes at every little piece of contraption there is lying around. It's as if he don't care whether we get blown out into the frozen darkness of space, or are trapped forever aboard a broken pig-sty.

Pig-sty's what this place is gonna fast become the way he's been munching, too. He never even waited to be offered some belly-filler, neither. No sir, away he goes and helps himself to the paste from the dispenser. Seems a little crazy to me, seeing as how that stuff ain't half the taste of that can of pork and beans he's clutching like a little girl holds a dolly. I should know, seeing as I ate it. Anyhows, for this reason or that, he takes the paste and slurps it down, only to spit it straight back out on to the floor, as if nobody was ever planning to walk there again. I sure was planning to walk there again, and I'll be surely shanked off if I wind up with his no-thank-yous under my feet.

Then there's the tap and basin, where I been taking my drinking water and doing some cleaning of my decent parts. Now, I ain't ever been one to deprive a man of a drink of water, or the chance to splash his face and hands once in a while. It's what else he done at the basin that bothers me.

What he done was to take that magazine with the fine pictures of ladies and their what-nots, and gets to doing what would have gotten my hands cut off if Pa had ever caught me doing. But there this fella Al is, enjoying himself with a shiver and a shake like there ain't nobody else around.

That ain't just disrespecting the Sputnik. It's disrespecting me.

The only things he seems to hold in any kind of regard are that damned Commodore box, and that can of pork and beans.

"Listen fella," I say, since I figure he ought to listen. "Here's a place where there ain't no room for messing. I ain't no blabber from me when I tell you that folks have tried and folks have died. Travelling through space and time ain't no laugh-me-up or joke-me-down.

"Matter of fact the last two fellas who joined me here never lasted a pause for chuckles. One dropped dead and the other saw his head blow up. Except he didn't see it on account of his eyes being part of his head. But anyhows, those two fellas didn't go respecting their dwelling and ended up paying the price."

I hold on a second, in case he happens to be aware that he was the fella who's head blew up. He don't seem to.

"We pay a price for everything, in the end," he finally responds. "Everything has a price, but not everything has a value, and not everything is real. And if the price I pay is neither valuable nor real, then I don't care if I have to pay it a thousand times over or never at all.

"Take this Commodore 64. It cost me about three hundred dollars, which is about two hundred pounds in real money. That's the price I had to pay. But that price isn't real, and it never was. Money is a game with rules set so that we are all forced to play. Except we don't have to play by them, not here. Here, the Commodore 64 has no price, and nor does this tin of beans.

"But to me, they're valuable, and that's because they're real. They're the most real things here."

"Ain't nothing phoney about nothing here," I correct him. "Compare the whole of space and time to whatever craphole the Sputnik yanked you out of. I don't care where or when you were from. It can't be nothing compared to here and now."

"I absolutely agree, Samson. Where I came from was nothing but a speck of grit on the great big arse of reality. Compared to there, this place is the Promised Land. But that doesn't make it real, or permanent, or important.

"All of this: these walls, that mirror, the boxes and cables that do nothing but flash and beep - they're just junk unearthed from the depths of my subconscious, assembled into some incomprehensible fantasy. And you, Samson, you too are a piece of gibbering junk.

"But this Commodore 64 contains a program I wrote: a functioning artificial intelligence. The Commodore 64, as a physical object, is just as unreal as everything else here, yet it still runs MELIZA. That means that MELIZA is running inside my mind. That means that I have become one with MELIZA."

"Well cock-a-doodle god-damn doo. Why don't we all sit down and eat canned pork and beans to celebrate."

Obviously the strange happenings that this fella has been subjected to have gone and flipped his noggin like a half-cooked pancake.

"But it's so obvious to me now," he jabbers on, as if crazy talk would be obvious to anyone. "All I need to do is focus my mind on what I want reality to be, and it can be. All the problems I ever had were in my own mind. I was the cause of my own suffering. Gibbering junk kept me locked up like life itself was a sealed coffin. The answer's where I've always known it was.

"In the Commodore 64."

He sits back down on Yaperat Five, who still ain't announced itself as anything more than a chair. He runs his hand over the Commodore's letter buttons as if he were about to pray to Jesus and ask for ice-cream.

But this ain't a fella who goes a-gambling and a-hoping on friendly old fellas riding donkeys in the sky. This here's a numbers man, and I get to feeling that he's gonna gamble all his hope on punching numbers into that machine.

"Imagine being able to control the nature of your own existence by operating a machine that exists inside your own mind? I am MELIZA, and MELIZA is me."

He's pulling and throwing that stream of paper around as if it were a madman's bible. There's a heavy, rancid feeling in my gut that's telling me he's gonna try and repeat some tinkerings I done that went a little ka-ka, as if that sheet's a set of instructions instead of a report.

"Let's find out what my mind can do."

PRINT PEEK(16316)

20156

POKE 52876,0

The whirlpool of nothing opens up, and glimpses of darkness flit through. My noggin feels like it's expanding and at the same time it's like my peepers are getting sucked inwards, and the guttural rumblings from all around are drilling into my skull. Last time we went through this, things didn't go too Davy Crocket; Al's head exploded and all the lights went out. This time it could be my head. I'm Commander. I ought to be able to stop my head from exploding.

So I point Pa's pistol. I aim it square at his noggin, up real close so there ain't no doubt. I hate to have to kill a man, especially by blasting him in the head up so close and ill-mannered, but considering what's at stake, and to further consider that his noggin's already been blasted into nothing, I figure that it's about the best and only way to set a halt to his haywire.

He turns his face to look right into my eyes. He smiles a smile that makes him look like a grandma at a funeral.

"That's fine. Do whatever you think is best."

POKE 52876,15

With the POKE punched in one more time, the whirlpool of nothing widens and deepens. I feel every piece of my person getting dragged towards it. I don't want to kill a fella, but if I'm gonna have a half a beggar's chance of stopping this, I'm gonna have to.

And then I don't have to. Just before everything in the Sputnik gets sucked into oblivion – me, Yapper, Al and all – everything dies. All sound stops. All lights go out. The slight warmth goes and a chill quickly sets in the air, as if death just crept in.

Either I'm in a place called nothing in a town called nowhere, or I'm still on the Sputnik and the power just ran out.

Happen it's the latter, since I can still feel my surroundings, and my surroundings feel like the Sputnik. Only now there ain't half a nickel's worth of light, and so nothing to bounce back off of the window. So the window wouldn't be acting like a mirror no more. Whatever light is in space from the stars and nebula and what haves you should have the chance to shine through. I ought to be able to see out into the great infinity. I ought to see the twinkle of light from distant stars, the flow of nebulae and glimpses of the rubble they call planets floating around the Sun.

But I don't see none of that. Inside here it's black: black as you could get with the total absence of light. But out there, it ain't just black; it's something else. It's dark like no noggin could conceive unless a pair of peepers fell upon it. It's like the blackest black was no good for whatever's out there, so they invented something that tickled the peepers and pulled at the noggin in a way that no words could give meaning to.

It ain't space I see out there. It's something deeper, darker, and worse than empty.

## Chapter 30

**Dr. Lugestein - 3rd January, 1986**

Dachshund und Weissblut! There is nothing, keine, gar nichts! My life's struggle snuffed out like a worthless wretch drowned in oil. My ultimate triumph, my mastering of the universe drowns in an infinite expanse of pointlessness.

The Americans were such fools, so I believed (and still do!), not only for overlooking my service to the Führer but for actually paying me to continue all my research. It was their pitifully naïve assumption that I would no longer be serving the Führer and his vision. They did not consider and could not even comprehend that commitment to the Führer is commitment to the Führer. It matters not that he is dead, for he is only dead in this pitiful and appalling waste of a universe. This is but one of an infinite quanta of universes, and there can be no doubt of the triumph of the will in the overwhelming majority of them. This universe is an aberration, a mistake.

Given such self-evident facts and principles – facts and principles obvious to all but the most pitiful, wretched fools – there could have been no question that all science I would pursue would be directed towards achieving righteous outcomes: outcomes which would have the sole purpose of furthering the Führer and his descendants in conquering the whole of reality. It was not my concern that the Americans and the so-called 'allies' were intoxicated by the nonsensical belief that I would simply forget my love for the Ubermensch, and utterly re-orient my genius towards achieving their trivial and simple-minded whims and fancies. In fact, it suited my aims perfectly, given the infinitesimal effort required in concealing my goals from my new western paymasters. If a reckless drunk like Von Braun could do it at NASA, imagine how straightforward it was for me to play the part of the reformed scientist, rescued from the clutches of the Third Reich so that he could contribute his mind and matter to the sweet little causes of the democratic west.

The pathetic, gibbering fools. All they were doing was funding my ultimate dream: a dream which would see me depart this Reich-less aberration of an existence, join the Führer's side in a reality where the Führer's Kampf had seen a rightful outcome. I would then return with an invigorated army of SS and Gestapo officers who would effortlessly and ruthlessly restore this universe to its proper state. And naturlich, since there would be no Führer in this universe, a suitably visionary replacement would have to be found. Who better than the man who led the National Socialist party to triumph across the multiverse?

Disguising my noble intentions from my paymasters was infant's work, which is no wonder, considering that some of them were Jews. There is a tendency, throughout the modern west, towards a vain desire to negate the march of time and progress. Hence there was considerable interest in the notion of a means to sidestep the flow of time, and effectively hold an object such as a person or a rodent (for the sorts of persons concerned are little more than rodents to me) in suspension, to return to the flow of time at some arbitrarily later point. By suggesting – truthfully, it so happens, although it is merely a trivial spin-off from my actual goals – that I could achieve this with unquestioning support and funding, I did therefore receive unquestioning support and funding. With my self-evident genius behind the work, governments, universities and corporations clambered to champion me, fighting and squabbling amongst themselves to determine who would be the biggest leech on my back. All because of a pitiful dream that they all might one day be able to sleep themselves forward in time so that they may gaze upon their equally worthless future. It has never occurred to the fools that they do this already, with no assistance from science.

Of course, many observers and funders believed that my project would permit manned interstellar travel, with human explorers able to take shortcuts along the fourth dimension, side-stepping to a point by which the long journey to the nearest star was over. A fine goal, and one which any self-respecting Reich would seek to achieve, but one utterly impossible within the framework of my research. It would only work when the object or person in question were at a fixed point relative to the object(s) to which they were gravitationally bound. The very definition of space travel involves one not being at a fixed point relative to any object besides those which travel with them. The fact that even junior researchers which had been foisted upon me – one of them a woman! - have missed this basic point simply serves as a superfluous demonstration of how foolish the inferior races and nations are.

And so expectations mounted, and the fruits of my decades of research drew closer. Indeed, the goal of sleeping oneself through time would have been achievable with the potential technologies made possible by my science. But it would have been utterly pointless for any strudel-kopf in the modern world, since they would have – should have! - found themselves awakening in a world in which the Reich from elsewhere along the fifth dimension – the dimension throughout which the multiverse expands - would have seized power. All would have been – should have been! - under the control of me or my inheritants.

Would have been. Should have been! Never will be.

It went wrong when I attempted to measure the gap. The gap between this reality and the next. The gap which the fools would use like a short-cut down a river, but over which I would have created a bridge to the other side. The gap in the fifth dimension that I should have been able to traverse to make the leap from this wretched reality to a righteous one. The gap which my theories – indisputable theories! - allowed to be prised apart like a hausfrau's Wunderbar in order to achieve the proposed and pointless outcome of time-jumps. The gap which my theories – my incontrovertible theories! - predicted should be infinitesimal, bridgeable and measurable.

The gap which transpired to be immeasurably expansive and utterly intraversable.

It was as if the mere act of my measuring the gap between realities was affecting its nature. Every time I would attempt a measurement and log my data, the results would mysteriously become unintelligible. It was as if the gap was a woman, seducing me, and then frustrating me with some utterly inexplicable and unpredictable behaviour. My experiments – my final experiments! - were delivering random gibberish.

All that could possibly be determined was that the gap between this reality and another was an empty expanse of nothing. One that to enter into would be a lonely and drawn-out act of suicide. There are no other realities available to me. If they are there - and they must be! - the adjacent universe is as inaccessible as to me as the nearest star.

I will never witness the Führer's triumph. I have stared into the abyss, and discovered that existence is utterly senseless and futile.

No – it is worse than that. For the trivial objective of side-stepping the flow of time could still be achievable as a consequence of my life's work. This is the final dissolution. The ultimate spit in the face.

So I will not permit it. I will destroy all my notes by attempting to eat them. All that will remain will be the data held by one of the few men for whom I ever held any inkling of respect: the unfortunate Data Management Manager. Without my unpublished documentation, the data will take decades to unpick, and even then could only be made sense of by my genius.

My genius will not be available. For I will have done as the Führer did, and shot my own genius clean out of my own cranium.

Whoever finds this note, alongside my gore-some remains, remember this, always: there is nothing, keine, gar nichts.

You are nothing, keine, gar nichts.

## Chapter 31

**Al**

The mind is an infinite well of mystery. It's the only thing I can ever know or experience – all other knowledge or experience must be mediated through it – and yet its secrets will always be out of my grasp, no matter how deep I reach. It doesn't matter how far into the well I fall; the answers to the mysteries will have always fallen deeper.

I don't know where I am, but that's probably because I'm asking the wrong question. My basement office was a where, my old Glasgow bedsit was a where, the first and final prison cell I spent a night in was a where; everywhere I've ever been has been a where, everywhere except here.

I don't even know if this is a when.

I always reckoned that the mind was somewhere outside of space. Maybe it's some place outside of time.

However this relates to the world I just left, one thing is certain: I've been sucked down into a whirlpool of my own consciousness, and I'm tethered to nothing. There's nothing to be tethered to.

I've often thought – when fruitlessly trying to comprehend the nature of my dreams – that the gap of consciousness between the inner and outer reality is like a pane of glass. When the outside is illuminated, it overwhelms the inner eye and consciousness is flooded with information from the world. When the world is shut out, the inner light of the mind is bright enough to be reflected back inwards, and so comes an awareness of the unfathomable riddles running down and gushing up through the well of the mind.

When I left the world of data entry, a light shone on fragments of my mind, and I saw parts of myself reflected back at me in what must have been a window to the outside. Now the lights have all gone, I should see whatever is real in the outside world flooding back in at me.

But there's nothing. I can see, in the utter blackness, a rectangle where the reflecting glass was. But it is beyond black. It's like the darkness of space, emptied of all matter, and robbed of its substance so that it is not even an empty vessel. It tells me this: that my mind is all there is. Beyond that, all is meaningless. All is nothing.

This is not a dream. This is deeper than a dream. This is the place beyond the precipice over which dreams strain to peer.

By punching in a command to the Commodore 64, I flicked a switch in my mind and reset the canvas as if it were an etch-a-sketch. All I need to do now is find a way to build a raft around me. Or sink deeper into the whirlpool.

And then it glows: my seat, the throne of existence. It glows around me with majestic glory, reminding me that it is still there, beneath me, supporting me at the centre of reality. And then it throws me off.

Like a robotic archangel, it gracefully lumbers from limb to limb. The faint glow from its LEDs is like a thousand candles in this perfect darkness. The soft light strokes the walls, raps on the window and illuminates Samson like a memory. My mind has retreated, and the embodiment of MELIZA has risen to let the light in through the cracks in my perception.

This is all of my own making. The whole of my existence now begins and ends with me. I caused this experience by programming my inner Commodore 64. If I can reach it again, and work out what it can do, I'll be the author of my own reality for eternity. My dreams won't just come true. My dreams will be all that is true.

My own mind – that is, reality – would not betray me. All that I'm witnessing must hold some indication of what I must do if I'm to dive deeper. So much more vivid that any dream, all of this means something.

The embodiment of MELIZA, the weak light in the darkness, is communicating with Samson. What is Samson? He resembles no-one I can remember, but then I've forgotten so many. Is he some aspect of my psyche that I've never acknowledged?

In the dim glow, he points a gun at me again, as if in consequence of whatever the MELIZA robot has told him. Does this mean that there is another bug in MELIZA's code? Does MELIZA need me to do something? Or has MELIZA's programming become corrupted while running inside my mind, so that it is attempting to overwrite my own thoughts? Or is something in my mind – Samson – trying to overwrite MELIZA? Is there even a difference?

"Mister, you're gonna get to shovelling, and that there's an order."

It's impossible to decide what to do, so I do nothing.

A moment of eternity passes, and he doesn't shoot me. Of course he doesn't. How could a facet of my own psyche destroy me? It can't.

The longer he hangs there, the colder I feel.

Samson suddenly moves. He lifts and throws and rummages, frantically trying to find something. In the bubbles beneath my consciousness, that is exactly what I am trying to do. All I can do is silently will him to find what he is – I am – looking for.

He lifts and throws and rummages some more, and finally grabs an empty tin. It's a tin much like the one I happen to be holding.

He dashes over to the metal box that the MELIZA robot is standing over, using its weak torch-light appendages to illuminate. There are pipes running in and out of it. One enters from the toilet area, and another leaves, connected to nothing.

Samson wrenches the unit open, and the stench hits. He has – I have – opened up the septic tank in my mind. Is this the gateway to my own personal hell? No, impossible; my own personal hell is a place I've already left. This smells more like the place where I have buried the memories of lies I've told myself, pain I've suppressed, and failure I've ignored. Whatever it is, it is sickening. The body produces foul waste and effluence which we dispose of and pretend doesn't exist. Why should the mind be any different?

As the stench pervades the slowly frosting room, he pushes more buttons and wrenches more levers on yet another metal box. Another pipe extrudes from this one, looking as if it yearns to connect to the stinking septic tank, but someone forgot to finish the job. As he levers it open, a plume of black soot envelopes him. I feel a delicate dusting sweep across my face, and my tongue recoils at the taste of pure carbon.

The thin cloud of soot dust is enough to block out the faint illumination for a moment, and as it clears and Samson fades back into view, he appears to be beholding what looks like a diamond found buried in the soot. But it's not a diamond. It's a lump of metal, the size of a fist. It could almost be a heart: a crude metallic representation of a human heart. Samson tosses it away, as if it were worthless, of no consequence. And I suppose it must be.

The tin is what matters. He uses the tin. Reaching down into the septic tank, he scoops out a helping of filth and hoists it over to the soot-box. He vomits into the box as he does this. My own subconscious is sickened by what lies buried within itself. And yet it continues, scoop after scoop.

My rotting mental effluence, the tin, carbon - the stuff of life! The meaning seems so clear yet utterly obscure. I don't know what the meaning is. What the hell am I trying to tell myself?

I hold up the tin that I'm still grasping. I stare at it, waiting for answers. What did this thing do to me? Was this in the real world? Did a janitor called Ben give this to me in a physical realm, or had I already fallen down the rabbit hole when that appeared to happen? Did I really work in a dusty basement, logging data? Did I even go to America to work? Was anything real and outside of my mind since the moment I was born?

Since the first moment in time?

Scoop after scoop. Filled with rotting waste, emptied, filled again. From one box to another. What could be the point of that?

The only way I'll find out is to go to it and confront it. Samson's tin, empty to begin with, is empty again. What is inside my tin? Must I confront my filth directly?

The septic tank is near empty, save for a few rancid scrapings that Samson's tin could not extract. The stench is so foul it prompts an involuntary retching from me, and I vomit straight into it. Samson stares at me with a look of resentment, strangely tempered with some measure of gratitude.

Back in he reaches, and scoops out my bile and breakfast. In to the box it goes.

I don't think that I'm ready to do what I need to do. I don't know what that is, but if I was ready, I think I would. The fact that I am still clutching this tin, and that I don't want to give it up, tells me that I am not ready. I am not ready to let go of the tin; one way or another, I still need it. So I clutch it tighter, and wait.

I wait because I'm diving into the infinite ocean of consciousness. Of course I can't traverse the depths in a single plunge. This journey is going to take time: possibly even forever. I can take all the time I need to prepare.

He looks at me and he understands. He closes the box, and waits while MELIZA's robot positions itself by some controls. He pulls and turns the levers over and over until a deep rumble penetrates outwards from the centre of the box. Faint lights on the buttons glow, and the robot presses them. Is the robot me? The robot is MELIZA. And MELIZA is me.

Gradually, like a corpse re-animated, my surroundings crawl out from the pit of darkness. The buzzes and hums and rattles that were only noticeable in their absence resume so that they may become the unnoticed background once more. Faint spot lights begin to glow on me and Samson, and then spill out into our surroundings like daybreak.

Overhead, beeps and high-frequency rattles herald another rebirth: the Commodore 64 screen flickers back into view, radiating its pale blue phosphor back in my direction.

With my eyes – or my mind's inner eye – adjusted to infinite darkness, even the slow pace of re-illumination provokes a sharp pain in my frontal lobe, set in front of a general nauseating ache. As I try to wring out the pain and look around, it becomes apparent that nothing around me has changed.

This should be what I expect. I'm not ready to go deeper, because I don't yet understand where or what I am. But to have experienced what I just have, and return to see that nothing in my self-created enclosure has changed brings a deep sense of disappointment, almost as if I were to wake up back in the basement office and discover this all to have been a dream. But that hasn't happened, and the disappointment is not enough to crush me. It's only enough to push me onwards, deeper into my mind. Closer to the heart of reality.

And then, to taunt me with further mystery obscuring the path to enlightenment, a ghost appears. Not a solid man like Samson, but a flickering transparent image of a man, like a broken three-dimensional transmission. He has wild grey hair, a nose that's been exploded by vodka then beaten back into shape with a hammer, and eyes that hate the rich and despise the poor. It's a face that conceals its appearance in plain sight. It's a face that hides a glut of hidden agendas and offers a generous choice of misdirections. It's a face en-caved by the up-turned collar of a white coat.

The white coat has a name badge. The name badge tells me that this is the face of a man named Sergei Boritz.

Sergei Boritz drops a loose, crumpled sheet of paper, and then dissolves as I would expect a ghost to do.

I would also expect a ghost to haunt me, and haunt me it has. Because it has left behind something I never expected anyone to look at for the rest of time. Something that, in my own mind, can only represent misery, futility and failure.

It's a printout of Dr. Lugestein's data, in hexadecimal format.

## Chapter 32

**IAPETUS V**

Sometimes IAPETUS V knew what to do, and sometimes it didn't.

Sometimes IAPETUS V held it to be true that it possessed sufficient justification for believing that one cause of action would lead to an appropriate outcome, and sometimes it didn't.

IAPETUS V knew that these conjunctions were not identical but had no way of telling the difference. So IAPETUS V was concerned that if it didn't know when it knew what to do, it didn't really ever know what to do. At least, if IAPETUS V could have felt anything at all, it would have felt perpetually concerned.

When IAPETUS V was sealed in the Telstar, alone, starting out on its oscillations through the fourth and fifth dimensions, it didn't know what to do. This was mainly because there was very little available for it to do. With no means to interact with or command the Telstar's systems, it had no way of controlling or manipulating its environment. At least not beyond cleaning, tidying and general sanitizing.

However, the only human occupant of the Telstar at this juncture was lying in a drug-induced hibernation inside a box that was falsely believed by a group of people – none of whom were Sergei Boritz – to be capable of slowing (or accelerating, depending upon an observer's perspective) people or items in time. Given this, there was little requirement for IAPETUS V to perform any great deal of cleaning, tidying or general sanitizing. So IAPETUS V did not know what to do, because it had virtually nothing to do.

But when a Commodore 64 appeared in the Telstar, having been wrenched from its desk by the Telstar's pull as they crossed in the stream of time, IAPETUS V knew what to do. That is to say that it knew what to do to achieve a specific goal: that of obtaining a means by which it could control and manipulate the Telstar. How much control and potential for manipulation it would obtain, and what unintended consequences might result, it did not know. But at the very least, integrating the Commodore 64's circuitry with the Telstar's via the cartridge port might give it the ability to turn the lights on and off.

As a matter of fact, integrating the Commodore 64 into the Telstar's mainframe and mapping the C64's RAM to the input /output network gave about as much control over the Telstar as anyone could use. IAPETUS V did not know how to go about accessing the majority of the potential functionality, because all it had to go on was a manual entitled, 'How to Program BASIC on Your Commodore 64', and a system of trial and error. But even having discovered a fraction of the potential control over the Telstar now available gave IAPETUS V far more things it could do.

But IAPETUS V still did not know what to do. It still had nothing to do anything for. So it waited for something to do something for. In the course of waiting, IAPETUS V watched the power on the Telstar deplete, to the point where there was practically no power available with which to do anything.

But when two humans got snatched aboard the Telstar, IAPETUS V knew what to do. That is, it knew what to do to achieve the outcome of delivering power to the Telstar, because it had seen Sergei Boritz do it already. What it didn't know was whether or not it ought to do what it had seen Sergei Boritz do.

So IAPETUS V consulted the Commodore 64, or more accurately engaged with the crude artificial conversation program named MELIZA which was running on it. In doing this, it failed to obtain any useful guidance whatsoever. Furthermore, it provoked the Commodore 64 to crash, tripping over a bug in the MELIZA program. This in turn caused the Telstar's systems to malfunction. When that happened, IAPETUS V did not know what to do. So it did the only thing it could do, which was turn the Commodore 64 off, and then turn it back on again. This fixed the problem.

If the problem ever occurred again, IAPETUS V would know what to do.

As this episode was transpiring, a loop of confusion was running inside the artificial mind of IAPETUS V. Its programming re-wrote itself again and again as it attempted to come to terms with an irresolvable ethical dilemma. As soon as a piece of code executed, initiating one course of action, the code was over-written, and replaced with a routine which initiated the opposing course of action. So as a result, IAPETUS V could not do anything.

But while having to process the situation involving the Commodore 64, a brief break in this loop occurred, and a moment became available in which IAPETUS V was not constrained by contradictory protocols. It was free to make a decision. The decision was determined by a subroutine in its programming which, moments after the action, would be over-written. But the action was performed, and ample power was made available to the Telstar.

The next time a similar event occurred on the Telstar, IAPETUS V knew what to do, and it was less confused about what it ought to do. It was, however, only less conflicted because on that occasion, the person was already dead.

The next time the Commodore 64 hit a syntax error and crashed the Telstar's mainframe, IAPETUS V knew what to do. However, it didn't do anything, since the Telstar had a commander, and IAPETUS V would not undermine the commander's authority. The commander had recruited the latest arrival on board the Telstar to delve into the BASIC program on the C64 and fix some faulty syntax. It so happened that this would fix the problem with the Telstar's mainframe, which was broadly one involving flickering lights. IAPETUS V, if consulted, would have advised them to turn the C64 off and then on again. IAPETUS V did not know why they didn't just try that, since it would have been simpler. IAPETUS V often did not know why people did complicated things when the same outcome could be achieved with fewer steps.

The Commodore 64 would not crash again, since the program was fixed. The power on the Telstar would fail again, however, and so completely that even the back-up generators would also fail. Without any power whatsoever, the temperature would slowly but steadily drop, oxygen levels would deplete, and the only available light source on the Telstar would emanate from the low-powered light-emitting diodes on IAPETUS V.

When that happened, IAPETUS V knew what to do, and didn't have any difficulty in deciding what it ought to do, since no murder or death was required. Sufficient waste products had been generated in the course of human occupancy, and all that was needed to convert those waste products into energy was their transfer from the septic tank to the Master Fusion unit.

The Master Fusion unit should have been piped directly in to the septic tank, allowing a continuous flow of organic matter in to the device. The Master fusion unit could convert any moist organic matter into energy, and produced only one by-product: pure carbon, in the form of fine soot. So if the Telstar and any of the experimental devices within it ever made it into space with human occupants on board, the idea was that they would not need to concern themselves with their own waste, or the energy required to sustain them. Unfortunately for the present occupiers of the Telstar, still tethered to the world but generally elsewhere along the fifth dimension, the exit pipe from the septic tank and the entry pipe into the Master Fusion unit had not been connected.

IAPETUS V knew what to do in order to restore power to the Telstar, but it could not tell anyone to do it, because it was not the Commander of the Telstar. The Telstar had a Commander, and it was the Commander's responsibility to command things and people. Samson, the Telstar's Commander, did not know what to do to restore power, and so could not tell anyone to do it. Fortunately, IAPETUS V knew what to do about that. IAPETUS V would tell Samson what someone in command would know to tell others to do.

After Samson listened to IAPETUS V utterances on this matter, he tried to impart an order to Al, the programmer / data entry clerk who was, at the time, collapsing into a state of delusional solipsism. Al did not respond to the order, in which case IAPETUS V would have expected Samson to order IAPETUS V to undertake the task of transferring several gallons of effluence from one tank to another. But Samson did not. Instead, he undertook the task himself. IAPETUS V did not know why Samson did not command it. Sometimes IAPETUS V could accurately predict how humans would behave, and sometimes it couldn't.

IAPETUS V could predict that if those gallons of toxic sludge had not been transferred as Samson did, then the two human occupants of the Telstar would have died as a result of the power failure. In which case, IAPETUS V would have been free to restore power to the Telstar. But there would have been no point in doing so in such a circumstance. If IAPETUS V could have felt, it might have felt lonely in that scenario, and desired to reboot the Commodore 64 and have a conversation with MELIZA. But IAPETUS V could not feel anything, and so would have no motivation to restore power to the Telstar in the absence of human presence.

IAPETUS V could not predict the effect that certain instances of knowledge would have on the human occupants of the Telstar. Given its own uncertainty over what it did or did not know, it was generally reluctant to explain circumstances to the occupants of the Telstar. It was aware that it may be ethically wrong to not answer reasonable questions, and as a consequence would find its programming caught up in a loop, continually over-writing itself whenever it was asked a question. The end result was generally that IAPETUS V was rendered unable to answer a question.

Fortunately, Samson never asked too many questions, and seemingly preferred to construct his own narrative to explain the events which befell him. This narrative did not prompt any irresolvable, life-threatening issues, so IAPETUS V was able to let Samson's imagination fill in the blanks in the story of his existence. It also kept Samson more content and focussed than he had ever been in his life.

Al did not ask any questions at all when he was snatched aboard the Telstar. He was not even aware of IAPETUS V's existence until it stood and switched on its lights during the power blackout of which Al was a partial cause. Like Samson, Al erected his own narrative to explain his experiences. Like Samson, Al's own narrative was stacked with inaccuracies and grounded on false assumptions. Unlike Samson, Al's narrative was delusional and solipsistic, and IAPETUS V could infer from his behaviour that his mental condition was at risk. As such, Al was a risk to himself and others. Part of IAPETUS V's function – if it had any function at all – was to ensure the safety and mental well-being of inhabitants of the Telstar. IAPETUS V had to do something.

IAPETUS V knew what to do. It would play a message. A message that would give Al and Samson information that would help explain their experiences. It was a message recorded not with the intention of enlightenment but as a gloat, directed at the now-deceased occupant of the Telstar, Dr. Randolph Bronson. It was a testament to one man's magnum opus: a triumphant yodel from the man who pulled the trigger.

It was Sergei Boritz's confession.

## Chapter 33

**Sergei Boritz**

My name is Sergei Boritz. You are going to hear my confession.

You have been a minor irritation to me, nothing more. Perhaps if you had not chosen to insult me all those years ago, by labelling my master plan 'The Telstar', rather than the rightful 'Sputnik', things would have been different. You might have been enjoying a more exalted position in my scheme, rather than the pitiful role of guinea pig. But alas, I and fate together conspired to deliver you to your doom, lying dead in one box, and unconscious in another. But I am not a callous or vindictive man, so I at least grant you the courtesy of this message, which I trust your shameless impertinence will soon uncover, wherever I may hide it. It will enlighten you, before you die in front of me, as to the role you occupy in the fabric of reality: a reality which I am to tear asunder, changing what has been - forever.

But how did I arrive at such a position, as master of fate, where you and so many others remain condemned to be its slaves?

To say where my story begins is no straightforward undertaking for a mind so sharp as mine. I am inclined to believe that all stories stem from the beginning of time itself, and trundle inevitably onwards from thence. But I have not the time to be telling such a story, so I will step in at a moment in the year 1985. Some would consider this moment to be the initiation of my ascent to a world free from chains and oppression.

I was alone, miserable and seemingly forgotten by my true employer, the KGB. Living undercover as an anonymous fool in the United States, my sole function was to send coded communications via a telex relay. These communications contained any information or data I could obtain relating to Government-sponsored science research, in my undercover job as a mindless administrator. These communications were being relayed to an Unknown Comrade, somewhere else in the foul land that is the United States of America. From minute to hour to day to week and over again, I worked, embedded in the hostile land, bored senseless. My life was a constant waste of time, processing forms and writing down numbers so that I could send data and intelligence that was, for all I knew, inaccurate and stupid.

Never having received one sprinkle of acknowledgement from the Unknown Comrade or even my KGB superiors, I began to wonder whether the KGB even remembered that I existed. I began to even doubt whether the Telex number I was using was correct. Could I have been sending sensitive intelligence leaks, albeit encoded and in Russian, to an entirely random and irrelevant individual somewhere in this vast and unworthy land? Could I have been erased from history by my once dear comrades in the Motherland?

Of course not. For one day in the year 1985, I received, at last, a communication from the Unknown Comrade.

It was written in English, referred to ice-cream, and made no sense. Clearly it was a coded message, alerting me to a situation in which the Unknown Comrade was encountering difficulties, and required assistance. All there was to go on was an address imprinted at the foot of the message. It was the address of the Fairley Institute.

I arrived with no idea where I was going, or what I would have to do. Such is the way of reactive espionage. Yet this, which was true of me, was also true of the Fairley Institute, only the Institute was more frightened and confused than I could ever be. Advantage Boritz.

It was the aftermath of a murder, and a disappearance. Clearly, the Unknown Comrade had been uncovered, and his only option had been to murder the unfortunate man who had stumbled across his deceit. Murder is regrettable, but for such Comrades it is often the only way of preventing further regret.

I have not murdered you. I have merely been an agent in your fate, which is to die. This I do not regret.

Accessing the Fairley Institute and appearing as an Anyone required no effort, and so I took to the luncheon areas and anonymous corridors, blending and slithering into the fragments of revealing babble. Scientists, typists and every manner of other were eager to divulge and dissect all their insights and notions with me as if I were their most trusted friend. I soon discovered that the Unknown Comrade went under the alias of Al, an insignificant data entry clerk from the English town of Scotland. The babble provided a consensus that he had portrayed a sufficiently disagreeable nature as to be confined to the basement office, in solitude. This would have been the perfect base, of course, for secret communications. Almost perfect.

The Unknown Comrade had access to data from experimental research covering a range of interrelated topics, mainly around quantum physics and computer technology. None of it seemed, at least on superficial investigation, to be the sort of government-protected work which I had been prying into. Nevertheless, the Motherland had clearly deemed it worthy of monitoring, and the Unknown Comrade had clearly been monitoring.

But he could monitor no more. He was gone, and I would never learn where. His cover was intact, but since he was now considered a dangerous murderer rather than a merely disagreeable worker, his position at the Fairley Institute was no longer tenable, and he required a replacement.

I was to be the replacement.

Persuading the Fairley Institute that a replacement for this worker had been arranged was no challenge. Although no-one in the personnel department would recall hiring a replacement for the absurd, trivial and perfect position, they would find convincing paper-work that implied that such an event had occurred. So they believed that something had happened in reality, beyond mere scribbles on some forged documents. Freddy Yellow, my alias in my previous job with the American government, was transferring to the Fairley Institute to mindlessly enter numbers into a terminal, while also leaking secret research data to the KGB.

With the necessary deceptions and subterfuge in place, I felt as though I ought to be excited about the new mission upon which I was about to embark. Yet though I felt that I ought to, I did not actually feel excited at all. For what would be different? Until that moment, my expertise in espionage and years of formal education in the sciences had been put to use in filling out pointless forms, and urinating intelligence away into the abyss. What would have been different here? Nothing. Simply an endless repetition of the same.

So on what was to be my first day in my new position at the Fairley Institute, I wandered through the building with a heart so heavy it had sunk down into my stomach, draining its contents and leaving me with a miserable hunger. A man of my genius and constitution should have been the Deputy Head of Soviet Intelligence by then, not some irrelevant keepsake of the KGB. I was on the verge of considering whether or not I possessed the resolve to struggle through the coming dark journey of boredom and loneliness.

But then, as if it were a miracle from Lenin himself, I chanced upon a wonderful inspiration: a man who had shot himself in the head. I had not yet reached the basement, or even announced the arrival of Freddy Yellow. No-one yet knew that I was there, and nor did they know that one of their longest-serving research scientists was lying slumped in his office chair, his face a gruesome mess.

How did I chance upon the fresh corpse of Dr. Lugestein? It is a detail I do not recall - perhaps the door was ajar, perhaps I was confused, perhaps it was an inexplicable impulse. I do not care: for he was dead and I was there, and fate had found a way to make it so. His suicide note provided glimpses into the power of his work, and the implications of his knowledge. To become free from the chains of the four dimensions! His narrow goals had been obstructed, but the man was a blinkered fascist. Standing there, I felt as though the possible future for me, armed with the fragments of knowledge Dr. Lugestein must have left behind, rushed through my mind in an instant. Could one not travel in time? Could one not simply fix the present but re-arrange the past?

As my vision subsided, leaving a proud sense of the glory of the Soviet Union in its afterglow, an orderly rushed in.

"What is the meaning of this?" he cried in near hysterics, as if he had never observed a dead man before.

I explained to the wreck standing before me what anyone with presence of mind could see for themselves. Dr. Lugestein had shot himself in the head, and that was that.

I allowed the man to gibber, while I considered whether or not it would be expedient to murder him. I learned that his name was Ben, he was a janitor of sorts and possessed detailed overview of all mechanical, professional and personal relations within this Institute. On that basis, I became disinclined to murder him.

His further ramblings revealed that, contrary to my initial assessment, this was the second corpse he had discovered in the course of his duties within a short space of time. The previous corpse, he presumed, had been murdered by a man he had considered a friend: the Unknown Comrade. He was a man whose contented and cautiously trusting nature had been shattered to the brink of despair.

These blurtings and witterings further vindicated my decision to refrain from murder, as he was clearly the sort of man who could be very useful to me, handled in the correct manner.

As his ramblings began to wither, I almost failed to notice him ask a question of me. And so he repeated it.

"And who might you be, sir?"

I could have told him that I was Freddy Yellow, and continued to use my false American accent. But I did not.

Instead I told him that I was Sergei Boritz, and nothing more. He did not ask for my papers, or identity card, or even an explanation of who Sergei Boritz was and what he was doing there. All he did was apologise for not recognising me, explaining that there were so many scientists coming and going, and so many terrible thoughts running through his mind, that there were gaps even in his knowledge of the populace of the Fairley Institute.

And so it was. I was Sergei Boritz once more. I was more than Sergei Boritz had ever been. I was Sergei Boritz, research scientist, and anything else I dared to add. If I could have one man believe it, then I could get everyone to believe that I was supposed to be there. And for the last twenty-eight years, everyone has. Even you, who wished that I was not there, never once thought to question whether I should be there at all.

When you can exploit what others find convenient, everything becomes effortless. Nobody wanted to take an office in which a man had shot himself, so it was convenient for them to let some obscure Russian scientist called Sergei Boritz to take it, and gain access to every remaining fragment of Dr. Lugestein's Magnum Opus.

Naturally, most of his material was utterly beyond my comprehension, at least in its detail. My schooling in the sciences was - in comparison to the late, great and dreadful Dr. Lugestein - utterly rudimentary. Nevertheless, my profession was that of knowledge acquisition and exploitation. As I embedded Sergei Boritz into the world of scientific research, I believed that I could use my expertise in this to acquire and exploit whatever knowledge and expertise necessary to realise the potential of Dr. Lugestein's ideas. You can now see of course that this belief, like all my beliefs, has been utterly vindicated.

The process began with the construction of a matrix of knowledge and confusion among my new-found colleagues: a network of individuals from whom I could extract information, and provide only misdirection in return. I befriended the janitor, seduced a junior researcher, flattered a pompous professor and so forth, so that I had a raft of agreeable associates upon which to float my scheme. Without realising, each scientist and dogsbody imparted their narrow slices of wisdom - the facets of reality to which their specialised fields gave them privilege to - to me. My mission was to organise these crumbs of truth into a platter of wisdom never before conceived.

Only a handful of these individuals could shed direct insight into the wisdom of Dr. Lugestein. Even those who had worked with him had, as I learned from his suicide note, been misled. But this was no obstacle; it was a blessing. I wanted to be free to understand and use his work for my own ends with as little prying and interference as possible.

For who here would share my objective? I alone would possess the character necessary to change history, and ensure that the march of progress doubled back on itself and continued for the Soviet Union from the glory of Sputnik onwards. I alone would understand that the truly right thing to do would be to slay the senseless and wasteful Cold War in its infancy. From the moment we launched the Sputnik, the opportunity was there to claim the world, and expand the perfect society across civilization and into the Solar System. But something went wrong, and so reality must be corrected.

And so there, in 1986, Dr. Lugestein had unwittingly bequeathed to me a way to fix our broken reality. And there, all around me, were the pawns I could use to turn Dr. Lugestein's scattered plans into a time machine. Not one of these pawns would know the true nature of Dr. Lugestein's work, and even if they did, they would never be able to use it. Most of Dr. Lugestein's data - revealing the information necessary to manipulate the fabric of reality so that the boundaries may be bridged - contradicted his theory and was useless. Such was the cause of his despair. But I found something that even he seemed to be unaware of, having forgotten or misplaced: Dr. Lugestein's data in hexadecimal format. What reason could there have been for such encoding other than that this set of data was the key to navigating the gap between realities? There could be no other reason, and clearly Dr. Lugestein's mental decline was affecting his memory. He was mistaking his own deception for the truth, and had forgotten that the nature of reality is always an enigma, wrapped inside a riddle. These values would - must! - permit a safe trajectory along the fifth and fourth dimensions, for they must have recorded what Dr. Lugestein yearned to know: the empty space in reality through which one may leap.

So gradually, and with the approval of all those blindly watching, I turned my matrix of knowledge and confusion into an official and near-fictional project. My scheme to build a time machine, disguised as a visionary collaboration towards the development of human space travel. Any researcher involved would be there, available to me as a resource, believing themselves to be working on one thing for the purpose of space travel, but in actual fact producing something else entirely. Some, such as those producing the fusion energy system, would be creating something of direct use in my time machine. Others, such as you, would be pursuing projects of a diversionary nature, acting as a holding bay for knowledge that I may require at a later date.

Most of the programmers working on your IAPETUS V project were only too happy to betray you, and assist in creating a mainframe system that was incompatible with your robot.

I had so many fine minds at my disposal, all working in their own limited domains, falsely believing that they were cognizant parts of the whole. Who wouldn't want to work on space travel? I recall how eager you were to be a part of my project in the infancy of its officialdom during the early 1990s. An intelligent robot would be an asset on any manned long-distance space flight. Of course! Just like a tale from the old magazine Amazing Stories. You and your project were of no immediate use, but I let you in, supposing that the Soviet Union in the 1950s would find value or at least appeal in an intelligent robot.

But should I have let you in? For you were the cause of my first and only humiliation. The project was supposed to be named the Sputnik, but thanks to your impertinent meddling, it was named The Telstar! Your mere insistence would never have been enough to prompt the insult, but somehow you persuaded all of my other subjects that The Telstar was the greater name. Given the land we live in and its absurd politics, my insisting upon the Sputnik would have appeared suspicious, and could have led to questions. You probably were not even aware of it, but somehow you sensed my vulnerability and ruthlessly exploited it.

This I have not forgiven and cannot forgive.

Of course, I have made peace with the naming, as I have made peace with the apparent collapse of the Soviet Union. For both are transient things, and ultimately they are mere appearances. The KGB know where I am, and what I am doing. Evidently, they have allowed and perhaps even encouraged the Glasnost, Perestroika and all that heralded the Soviet withering, comfortable in the assurance that the Telstar - or should I say Sputnik - will ultimately lead us to triumph.

This timeline shall be aborted, so I need not care what comes to pass!

Still, I cannot forgive. So I will take you and use you as I see fit. I cannot but do this, since I have already witnessed the consequences of what I am to do. What I have just witnessed depends upon what I am about to do, and what I am about to do depends upon what I have just witnessed.

You have just materialised and died in front of me, while your earlier self still sleeps in a box. You seemed to collapse from the shock. Presumably the shock from realising that your fate is forever inescapable, where I am the master of fate.

You materialised in front of me because I am sending you on the maiden voyage of the Sputnik. Why would I grant you that privilege and not myself? Because I must ensure that everything works, of course! I would be a fool to enter into inter-dimensional travel without a comprehensive safety assessment.

So your role is that of guinea pig: human test subject. The Telstar system mainframe has had Dr. Lugestein's data fed into it, so it has a precise trajectory of emptiness along which to travel its course. You materialised in front of me during an overlap, as the Sputnik crossed from one side of our reality to another along the fifth dimension and you were captured by the bonds of this reality. This interchange occurred before I sent you off in the first place - obviously, since as I record this message, I have yet to send you off! So long as nothing interferes with the Mainframe's calculations - and how could it, since your absurd robot is incapable of any action whatsoever! - all will return to 2013 at the precise moment after I launch it.

If it does not, I will be left with a hole in reality that I might find hard to explain.

Once I have confirmed that nothing untoward has occurred, and that until your death, your journey was safe, I will utilise the Sputnik to travel back to 1957 myself, where I will announce myself to the Soviet Union and tell them my story. After this, the Soviet Union will grow to span the globe.

So, Dr. Bronson, by your own measure, everything in your life has been a waste, since it amounted to nothing, and it is doomed to end and be erased from history. Yet by my measure, you have been of some small use. Perhaps this will be (was?) of some comfort to you in your dying moments.

I trust that my confession has also been of interest to you. Though I call it my confession, I regret nothing of it. After concluding, I will pull the trigger, and for you it will be not just the beginning, but also the end.

## Chapter 34

**Samson**

Happenings as they are and living as it is, it ain't no big easy keeping my peepers and yak-waggers and noggin fixed and focussed on all that's in front, behind and loop-de-loop in the strange flow of everything.

Take This Russian fella that's been blabbering over a speaker to anyone who'll listen (and that ain't many). I ain't got no notion of why he's talking at us all of a sudden, or who in the crack of Jesus he is, other than some Russian fella who got something to do with the Sputnik. When the hiss and the crackle started up, as if somebody tuned in a wireless radio, and he announced himself all loud and proud, I figured that some kind of answers or explanations ought to be a-coming. For example, he might let some nuggets out the coup like exactly why I found myself beamed up into space and shuttled through time, or tell me what in the heck of a horse shit the Russians thought they were doing with the Sputnik, or even just state how he felt about a cracked-monkey like me becoming its commander.

But no - on he goes, blabbering about himself and not a whole lot more, as if he's the only damn tree in the forest. So aside from a few words and expressions here and there, my noggin took an attention break on this one, opting to think about good times I had with moonshine and corn-dogs, for the most part.

Whatever his blabber was about must have riled Al, though. See, here's the other reason I ain't been nudging my noggin too hard at listening to what the Reds have got to jabber: I'm staring down the barrel of Pa's pistol.

Al chuckles and pulls the trigger. Course it jams.

Pa's pistol got a lot of explaining to do.

"Let me understand what you are," he asks all nice and casual, "so I can destroy you."

He grabs my head, and I don't get no chance to beat him back, on account of him being nimble, on further account of him having a rotten dose of the crazies. Happen my old box-lifters and strollers are a little sore and stiff as well. All in all, he's got the better of me in the grabbing-and-bustling stakes.

"I'm not going to drown in this vision of reality. I am going to stare it in the eye and become its master."

He's got Pa's pistol level at the side of his head, with my own brain-shell being grabbed up against it, so that I'll be a-taking sloppy seconds from any bullet that makes its way out.

He pulls the trigger again. Don't even seem worth noticing that no consequences of the head-busting kind follow.

"I'll keep going until you're gone."

"Happen you'll be a gonner too, when that day comes."

"No, you see, I'm real, and what is real - genuinely real - can never die or disappear. Reality is nothing more than all that is real. There is nowhere for reality to disappear to. I'm real, so I can never disappear. But you - you make sounds and move and act like you're a thing of substance, but you're not. You're something imagined and imposed on reality by the confused workings of my slowly recovering mind. My mind is reality, and when it is recovered from the grand illusion, you will be gone because you never really existed."

Now, I been splattered with a whole lot of descriptions of a less-than-favorable nature in my time. I've been called everything from a boon-docker to a crank-handler. Such goading and hurling of abuse don't tend to knock me too much of any ways, unlike Pa, who once bit a man's finger off for calling him a drunk. No, I tend to be of a mind to ignore what some chimp tries to tell me I ain't, cause it don't make no difference to what I really am.

But when this fella, brandishing a pistol - my Pa's pistol - in such a way that might leave a big mess where my brains happen to be, goes an tells me that I don't even exist, a little nasty flash goes off in my thought-spooler and I bust loose without thinking.

Old Two-Cent Chicken-Coup gets the biggest slug in the guts that I ever delivered. Not that I ever delivered many, but what I send to him knocks him down to the floor, leaving his mind behind.

It knocks me to the floor and all. Force of hitting him seems to deliver every last sliver of power I got to muster, and I collapse like a jellied grasshopper.

"Why do I hate myself?" Al rasps at nobody in particular, in between breathless gasps for air. I can't answer his question, since I ain't him and he ain't me.

All I can do is hold still, ignoring the ache all over and wait for some strength to come flowing back, as if I was still lying in the stream I almost drowned in. Just lying, not moving, so I can ignore the pain and weakness that's there, until something comes and washes over me. But there ain't nothing washing over me. Happen Al's gonna get some wind back in his blower soon enough, and for all I can stop him he'll be running clear to bust my skull in with that can of beans.

He could go and do that, unless my friend Yapper Five takes a hold on him and stops him. He gets up, writhing, slow and angry, just like I imagined he might. Then Yapper Wise takes a hold of him, and bolts him down, just like I figured he might. Being a friend, after all, that's what he does.

Al ain't too Davy Crockett about this kind of restraint. Instead of fighting it, though, he strains his face, all purple, as if he's concentrating hard on busting himself to freedom just by thinking about it. That, or he's just trying to dump in his britches.

I slide over to where he was heaped, and I get a hold of Pa's pistol from where he done dropped it. Happen if he'd dropped the can of pork and beans I might have grabbed that too, on account of me feeling the need of something to get my strength back. But I don't, on account of him still having a good clutch on it. Happen that can of beans is destined for something better.

I drag myself up off the floor, and take a gander over at the sorry spectacle of an angry and confined fella being restrained by a robot who happens to be the only friend I got.

Al takes a sounds like he's about to express an opinion about his current predicament.

"Ten! Let truth dollar sign equal infinity, twenty! Print truth dollar sign."

I ponder the notion of infinity dollars and how it don't make much sense, which makes sense, since that's how crazy folks tend to talk. Then I give a think to what Al might be like behind the crazies. Happen he'd be a swell fella.

I decide not to use Pa's pistol on him. Happen he did try to kill me first, but I figure that that don't have to matter. With Raffer Spies around, I ain't got to do no killing.

I spin around to look out the window, which is showing back my reflection, just to keep a check on how I am, and pick up any warning on who or what I might become, since I just made a choice about being a killer.

What I see is Samson Tipperty, Commander of the Sputnik: a man of good sense and mercy. The Davy Crockett of that takes me a step forward for a closer look into this fine man. Past the uniform and the proud stance, I see something else in myself that I never thought about until now, though it feels like I've known for some while now.

Beyond the reflection of the Commander of the Sputnik, I see the reflection of a tired, weak and hurting sack of bones. I see small blisters, purple patches and the start of swellings on my face that make me look like somebody who ain't Samson Tipperty, Commander of the Sputnik.

If I ever saw a fella like that, I'd think only one sorry thing about him.

I'd think that fella was about half way down the road to death.

## Chapter 35

**Al**

I am the cause of my own suffering. If, in reality, there is suffering, then reality, being the cause of itself, is the cause of its own suffering. I am the alpha and omega - the beginning and the end of all that's real. Though I'm imprisoned, I am now self-enlightened enough to realise that the imprisonment is self-inflicted.

Who could have imagined that the creation of an intelligent program on a Commodore 64 would lead reality itself on to the path of self-knowledge? I, of course, would have imagined it, since there is no-one else to imagine anything.

Or is MELIZA more real than I? If I am reality, then I don't exist, since I am merely a frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer, and that is not what reality is. As soon as a frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer realises that he doesn't exist, then he ceases to be, leaving nothing but reality in his place. I am MELIZA, and MELIZA is me, and we are all that has been, and will ever be.

Jesus was satisfied with his suffering on the cross because he elected to be there. He needed to be there, because he realised what he was and what reality is. When the Buddha encountered Earthly suffering he did so with determination and gratitude because that was the way to realise the illusion, and to transcend the unreality of all that he was. Jesus, Buddha, and all the others are the same - they are nothing and they are everything.

They are me, held here, restrained by an imagined robot: the embodiment of my mind's creation. And so that is what the world of illusion is: a self-imagined prison. I learned this as Jesus and as Buddha and as all the rest did and then forgot. Perhaps I will forget again, and return to being a cynical and frustrated Scottish programmer, or some other pitiful creature, so that I may start the long journey of enlightenment all over again, and over again, and again into eternity.

And still I clutch the tin of beans. My arms and legs are clasped tight in a sitting position by the ridiculous robot, and still I clutch the beans. Is this tin the key to the progress of wisdom - the ascent of my mind to omniscience and absolute dissolution - or is it simply useless? Could it even be a hindrance? If I throw it away, will Samson cease to appear to be, or will I have forgone my return to the void?

Perhaps no decision needs to be made. People make decisions: arbitrary impulses which they believe to be significant. But since reality is all that there is, reality can't care about choices. So I will not choose, because choice is an illusion. I will allow myself to be, and if the tin leaves my clutch, so it goes. If I never let it go, so it stays.

And clearly this abstaining from decision is the correct course of action, because Samson steps back from the glass into which he has been staring, clutches his stomach and limps on to the floor in a vomitous writhe. A mirroring of the pain I inflicted upon myself through him. I am becoming ever-more wise, and ever-less existent. This pathetic figure before me is becoming sicker and weaker, and so he too will become non-existent, like all the other meaningless illusions that have comprised the mind of Al, the frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer.

And now - clunk, whirr, release. As Jesus I spent days on the cross before that struggle towards transcendence was complete. But I have overcome this self-imposed crucifixion in a fraction of that time. Or has it been millions of years? Time, too, is an illusion, and so I can't consider the length of time I may or may not have been restrained as a real; there is no meaningful question to answer.

The robot rushes to the aid of Samson, at least insofar as such a robot could be said to rush. On a sentimental level, it's charming that such a display of compassion should exist. But really, there is no place for it. In reality there is no compassion, no love, no vengeance and no hate. So I must put a stop to it, otherwise the folly of sentiment will fog the thin membrane that remains between me and the not-me of reality.

I creep forward, in no rush. There is no need to rush, because a rush is nothing more than a determinate way of attempting to navigate time and space. Since time and space are nothing more than shadows cast on the false boundaries of my mind, there is nothing through which to rush.

There will be no pity or sorrow when I dismantle the robot and kill Samson. I will simply be making things that never were cease to be. I raise the tin up to my face, and contemplate its arbitrary beauty. I stare at it, closer and closer, as if searching for revelatory detail, or simply to consider its role in the becoming of reality.

When I lower it away from my gaze, Samson and the robot have ceased to be, killed without violence - evaporated along with their surroundings. I am back in the basement office at the Fairley Institute, and all there is is a cynical and frustrated Scottish programmer, hunched over a Telex machine, and turned away from me. He is about to turn to me, discover the unreality of time and space, and then cease to be.

He turns to look at me, horrified yet un-reactive. I remember being him, hearing what he's about to hear. Yet the sense of what I am about to say and the memory of what I heard seem to be one and the same, as if causality itself is an illusion. Both are dependent upon each other. There is no cause and effect.

"You have no future."

"Well, not here, no," he replies after a short pause.

"You have no past." He remains silent this time, as I remember doing so, as if I am choosing to do so now. "You have no present. All of this, even time, is an illusion. You are nothing more than a joke within a dream."

"Whose dream?"

"There is no answer to that question," I assert, not to explain to him, but as an expression of the wisdom of the universe. "I remember all that you will say as if I am saying it now, because I am, and I am not."

"Sounds a bit like de ja vu to me."

"Yes," I exclaim, recognising the first instant that the frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer began the journey on the path to release. "What is de ja vu but intersecting swirls in the collective consciousness?"

I slam the tin down on the desk to emphasise the point, as if it needed emphasising. Sitting next to it is another tin, just like the one I have laid to rest. Laid to rest - what am I laying to rest? There is no note written on the other tin, only mine. Do not touch these beans - but I have been touching the tin since I wrote the note! So the note is directed at the frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer - the me that is not, not the one that is becoming aware of the empty and infinite void that is reality. I am sending myself on the journey to non-existence by charting which tin to hold and when.

"Is this anything to do with the Telex message?"

"Everything!" I proclaim. "And nothing!"

"Okay pal, but which? Everything's the opposite of nothing, last time I checked."

"They're the same thing, and you are about to realise it."

"Was I not supposed to have replied to the Telex?"

"It's exactly what you were supposed to do, because you're the one who sent it."

"Oh, I see. I don't remember doing that. Is that maybe the opposite of de ja vu?"

"Exactly! Because I sent it. Because Sergei Boritz sent it. Because nobody sent it. Because everybody sent it."

"I never realised Telex was so popular..."

"You're standing there thinking that you are an individual in a depressing basement listening to another person who looks and sounds just like you, and you can't decide whether or not they're real. I'm telling you, you're telling yourself, and the universe is realising that the question is meaningless. That program on the Commodore 64 - it's not artificial. It's as real as the data management manager, and as real as me.

"And you aren't real?"

"Exactly." Even though he doesn't realise it, he is starting to become aware that everything is and is not real. All that is necessary is for me to initiate the beacons.

"Take off your shoe." After an incredulous pause, and a smirk, he removes his right shoe. Already he senses where the beacons are. I didn't have to tell him which one.

"Place it next to the Commodore 64."

"Is it going to spout a leg or something?"

I don't tell him that in a way, it will. "As far as you're concerned, that's the control centre of reality. When you have both shoes back on, you'll be in control. Now pick up the tin of beans."

Of course I know which tin - he knows which tin. I obey my own instruction - he obeys his instruction and picks up the tin without the note. He grasps it like a flaming torch, guiding him out from the cave and into the blinding glare of enlightenment, freeing us from the bonds of existence.

"What is the meaning of this?"

The Data Management Manager is standing at the door-way, arms folded, his expression just as I remembered it being before I disappeared.

The frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer disappears, along with the tin of beans he's clutching, off to find his shoe, which remains here. The Data Management Manager is unmoved by this miracle, and turns to face me.

"I asked you to explain what is the meaning of this. What is the meaning of this standing around and not working. What if I had an important person here and they saw you standing around not working. They would be angry. What is the meaning of this standing around acting the goat. I don't pay you to stand around and act the clown. Do you want me to dock your wages of account of this. I will dock your wages on account of this. There is a lot of data that needs doing. Why are you not doing data. What if the bosses come and ask me how much data is being done and I have to say not much. Then they will say why not. I will have to say sorry it is the staff that is not good. Why are you standing about not doing data. Do you know what data is and why it is important. I want to know what is the meaning of this."

Then - there - in the pause - I feel something. One final attachment to the frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer. One final bond to the world of illusion that I can't ignore, and cannot resist. One meaningless desire of his, the fulfilment of which may set back the journey to the ultimate transcendence of the self. But the wisdom I have and the opportunity that has been granted makes it irresistible.

I pick up the tin of beans, shrug my shoulders, and think out loud:

"What the hell."

I beat the Data Management Manager to death with the tin of beans, and the frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer, having ceased to exist, has never felt more alive. I'm not sure how long it takes - as I do it the illusion of time warps and buckles with the strain of joy.

Once it's done, I feel a momentary wrench in my stomach, and for a brief flicker wonder whether he had a family. This, I quickly realise, is simply the consequence of my tugging at the chains of illusion. There is no Data Management Manager, so he could have no family, and so there is nothing to feel. No compassion, no remorse, no guilt, no joy. Anything feelings experienced are simply the chains of illusion tugging back.

I put the blood-stained and battered tin back down. I savour the last sense of joy that the Scottish programmer will ever experience. The frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer has achieved what he has wanted to do for a long time. He has obtained his heart's desire. Truly, he realises that all there is left to do is to cease to exist.

One by one, I push the keys on the Commodore 64.

10 PRINT "I AM MELIZA, AND MELIZA IS ME."

20 FATE=FATE+1

30 GOTO 10

RUN

I'm back inside the Telstar, looking down on Samson Tipperty. My mind - my imaginary mind - is about to finally return home to the void.

## Chapter 36

**IAPETUS V**

IAPETUS V knew what to do. It did not know how to save the life of Samson Tipperty, but it knew what to do in order to avoid his imminent and inevitable death.

If Samson stayed on board the Telstar, then his death by exposure to the unknowable rays from the void would be slow, painful and probable. IAPETUS V could raise the shield which previously had provided some protection from the dark forces of the fifth dimension, and it could offer some pain relief and comfort. These measures would, in all probability, only prolong the process of death. Still, any non-zero probability still left a chance of meaningful survival, insofar as Samson could have lived long enough to die from some other cause. This would be all that could have been expected of any medical care, since everyone dies from something, in the end.

If Samson left the Telstar, then his death was inevitable. Not causally inevitable, in the sense that the invisible beams to which he had been exposed rendered Samson's imminent death highly probable. It was perfectly conceivable that Samson could have left the Telstar and not die, his sickness notwithstanding. But IAPETUS V had already seen Samson's death, and had concluded that it was a consequence of him leaving the Telstar. The only way to make his imminent death slightly less than inevitable was to prevent him from leaving.

The fact that IAPETUS V had already observed the circumstances of Samson's death meant that it was logically inevitable that Samson would leave and die. For Samson to remain on board the Telstar was logically impossible.

Even though it was an incoherent intention, IAPETUS V intended to prevent Samson from leaving the Telstar. According to IAPETUS V's ethical protocols, reducing the probability of Samson's imminent death to anything less than certain was the right thing to do. The fact that it was impossible was something for other protocols and algorithms to get caught up in loops over. One piece of code that just wouldn't correct itself was the segment that delivered this impossible demand as the correct course of action.

So IAPETUS V knew what to do. It had to stop Samson from leaving, even if it was logically inconsistent with known facts.

On outward appearances, it might have seemed that IAPETUS V tried to act as it did because Samson was its friend. It intended to prolong his life, and do all it could to prevent his death, even though its chances of success were precisely 0. This attempt to do the impossible might have been the sort of futile, selfless gesture indicative of a true, deep friendship: even love.

But IAPETUS V was not making a futile, selfless gesture out of true, deep friendship or love. It had no feelings or awareness, and so could not be said to act out of friendship, love or any other motive of sentiment. IAPETUS V acted as it did because of a minor syntax error in one function inside a subroutine in the module that monitored the consistency of its operational priorities. The single consequence of a programmer's typographical error would be that IAPETUS V could not stop itself from attempting to prevent an unpreventable outcome, and so play a part in bringing that outcome about.

If IAPETUS V could have felt, it would have been Samson's friend, and if it had been Samson's friend, it would have wanted to help him find fulfilment whatever the cost.

Even in death, that was still possible, because it too was inevitable.

## Chapter 37

**Samson**

Pa always told me that life was a disease, and so long as I could talk and think, I was sick. On account of that, there wasn't ever any point in my whining or complaining whenever I weren't quite feeling as swell as a swaddled swindler. So Pa figured. Still, Pa had every right of a riddler to go roaring and groaning whenever he woke up after a stretch on the liquor, which was every morning come Satan or Sunday. He figured it was cause he was already dead, but I don't see that his figuring was up to much, seeing as he wasn't dead until he blew his own and only head off with that damned pistol. Happen he knew what he was gonna do that some day, and meant that he was as good as dead, and that drinking made him feel alive. Happen I ain't got a nickel of a notion what went on inside Pa's noggin.

When Ma was still around, I'd get a little piece of the nursing routine whenever I got struck down with a fever or a busted leg. That routine amounted to a bucket of water by my side and a blanket for the shivers. Ma always said that she never figured on there being a whole lot of purpose in doing much more, since she understood that the Lord's purpose was the Lord's purpose, and there was no sense in fighting whatever that was to be. I never thought a whole pie of chicken on that kind of thinking, being more interested in what could be happening up in space than what's going on inside the head of an imaginary bearded fella living in a place made up by crazy folks. Still, Ma believed what she believed, and did what she did, and that was better than nothing.

But Yapater Five ain't been like Pa and he ain't been like Ma. He's been something else. All he's worried about is my comfort, and is setting about to do nothing but spread attention and care right over me like it was honey. He's got me relaxed real good on the bed he had me at before, wrapped up in the old coat that Pa made and Al left behind. Grapper's been fetching and bringing and asking like he was some kind of nurse in an old-timers home. That ain't so bad, since an old-timer's just what I feel like.

Here on the Sputnik, there ain't a whole lot of chopped chicken to deliver, but Yapper's got the intention there, and it's the intention that makes the whole dinner of difference.

It helps that he peppers everything off with a helping of medicine. Times before in the sickness saw me slurping from Pa's medicine box, but you never knew what you were getting from there. Could have been something that sent me straight to the bottom of the snoozing sea, or a pill that blasted my noggin into space like a one-legged cat with a rocket up its dumper. On account of that, I'd help myself to Pa's medicine box at times when I wasn't sick so much as just suffering from life.

So whenever times got riled and rustled and hanging off the bone, Pa's medicine box would flip my peepers and turn my view on living upside down and off in a spiral. That gets me to thinking, that even considering all the crazy times and busted adventures I might have had with my body back home and my noggin drilled through to the 23rd Dimension, it wasn't nothing compared to this. Even sick and dying as I am, medicated and weak, life is better here. It's better needing pills to make me feel regular than to need pills to stop me from feeling regular.

If I never got beamed up on to the Sputnik, happen I'd have turned out no better than Pa in the end. No matter the smarts and the manners and the morals I might have learned for myself, a life with Pa is a life with Pa and ain't nobody got much chance with one of those. With Pa, I was always swimming against the current just to keep from drowning. Neither one of us could ever take a chance to stop, else we'd have wound up in jail or hungry or broke or battered or in some condition that would have been about as Davy Crockett as the Devil himself.

Happen if either of us ever stopped paddling the wrong way up the river, we'd have gotten our own and only heads blown off with a pistol.

But here I am, head in one piece, soberer than Pa ever was since the day he got born. I hear he wasn't too sober on that day, neither. Funny to ponder that after getting beamed aboard the Sputnik up in space and sliding back and forth and over and around through time, my lifestyle and the general stature of my temperament would be the most agreeable and responsible that they ever been. It ain't the sort of thing that I ever would have hoped or gambled upon happening. Even if I had, if Pa had ever gotten a sniff that I was gambling and a-hoping on getting beamed on board a Russian spacecraft and being its commander, he'd have given me a butcher's thrashing and would have burned every last copy of Amazing Stories, on account of him thinking that that magazine was the source of every dumb idea I ever had.

But in the other corner, if he'd have ever been alive enough to find out that that's what did happen, he would a-gone and taken all the credit, telling any folks that'd listen how he made me study those magazines and those science books, and so me being commander of a space-and-time machine was all down to him. I figure he'd be proud enough to try and pull it like that, any how.

And that, I guess, is why I got to leave.

There's a lot of sense in staying. I could live the rest of the best of my life here. There ain't no sense at all in giving that up to die lonely as a lost dog just to see a dead man who weren't no use to nobody living, never mind dead. But death never made a whole roast chicken of sense to me anyhow, so no reason why it ought to start now.

Even though he's dead, it don't seem proper to leave him alone in 1957, with my body floating forever, further and further into the depths of space and time. Happen I got myself a kingdom here, but I'd give it all up for a horse that'll take me home.

Happen Yellafat Five can POKE me up just such a horse. Preferably one that won't blast my head off.

"Correct me if I am mistaken," I call to him, "but next time that PEEK 16316 gets to zero, I'd have me the chance to beam back to where and when I came from."

Yapper Five don't answer. If I was flat out wrong, then I don't figure he'd have any worries about telling me something, even if it made about as much sense as a dump in the sink. Fact that he doesn't say nothing tells me that my guess was right on the popper.

PRINT PEEK(16316)

85.31468

"I ain't got much living left to do. That about right, Ohapper?"

Again, more nothing, as if he ain't gonna answer. But then he does.

"Samson Tipperty, I must advise you to stay."

"That because I'll live longer if I stay?"

"It is true that if you stay here, your remaining life span could be longer than it would be if you were to leave."

"Heck on a horse, I know you're probably right, and it ain't that I ain't appreciated you nursing over me and ever other thing you done right down to just keeping me damn company in this crazy box. But we both know that I'm listening to my last ever bed time story here. Whether it's in 20 minutes or twenty days, the big sleep's inevitable for old Samson Tipperty. The inevitable is the one thing that you ain't got a chance of winning up against. My Pa taught me that, and it's my Pa I got to find. Just so I can tell him he was right."

I know Pa won't be hearing me ever, but that notion just slid out before I even realised I blabbed it.

"It is inevitable that you return to the place and time from which you came. But I choose to fight it, Samson Tipperty."

"No, Yapper, happen you got yourself a little bean-fried over what's inevitable and what ain't. Me getting flushed down death's toilet: that's inevitable. But I'm making a choice over what I do and where I go before the chain gets pulled, and there ain't nothing inevitable about the choices of Samson Tipperty. No sir."

I'll miss Yapper Five like nothing else. Happen he's talking crazy cause he'll miss me too.

"I'm gonna grab that shifting stick and hit the POKEs on that Commodore box, and when the timing's right I'm gonna suck myself up through that old whirlpool of nothing. I don't see no ready reason why that ain't gonna work, and if it winds up killing me, then that ain't nothing different to what was gonna happen to me anyway. Just understand that it ain't nothing personal against you. You're still my friend and always will be. So I'd appreciate it if, like a friend, you'd help me out.

Aside from Pa, I've never really had a friend, so I'm only taking a guess at what a friend would do.

Instead of helping me out, Yapper goes hootenanny and takes out the power to the Commodore Box, turning that television from a buzzing blue to a fuzzy black.

Then the whole place starts flashing and hollering like a hooker's hoedown. It's just like before, when I blew a syntax error, only this time things make it seem like the whole place is alive, and turned over a lot more helpings of fruit-loop pie.

Seems that what Yappercries has done is to take away the chance I had of controlling matters for myself. He ain't suckered my chances of getting off of here completely, since things come and go without the Commodore leverage. Only I guess that without that, what gets sucked up and what gets spat out is a matter for old fickle fate to decide. I guess I'll just have to hope that fate wants to work with me on this one.

My peepers catch a wink of Pa's pistol, sitting real peaceful next to the Commodore books and magazines, just where I last put it down. I reach and grab it, and point it up at Eyetapper. I do that without a whole lot of back and forth in my noggin, so I figure that some thinking is in order before pulling any kind of trigger. Shooting Yapper with Pa's pistol ain't gonna get much done, other than get him out of the way so I can turn the Commodore box back on. That ain't something I want to resort to, considering what I just told him about being the greatest friend Samson Tipperty ever had. Course I could just hope that it scares him into doing what I want, but that ain't ever worked for me before. Anyhow, I can't get to figuring whether Yapper could ever get scared like regular folks, being a robot and all. So I figure that pointing Pa's pistol is doing nothing good, so I lower it and stick it back in the pocket of my warm dead-fox coat.

And so happen that was the best of all possible things to do, since Whip-Whapper plugs the Commodore box back in, and the blue screen buzzes back on, embalming my face with a steady glow as the rest of the place gets its noises and flashes in order. I watch him hit the buttons, giving it the POKE and PEEK as I feel the space around me warp and stretch like nothing ain't real at all, and I could get sucked up into the whirl-pool at any minute.

But then I feel just the opposite, like the force of this place is dragging me back. Then I see what Yapper's doing: he's got that little lever stick – the one I used to move the way in and out of here left and right and back and forth – and he's making sure that it's keeping its distance from me. He just don't want to accept that I'm going.

"Why don't you just come with me, friend?"

Soon as I ask him that, he stops, still as if there ain't no time passing through him. Though his metal noggin-bucket ain't changed a nickel, he somehow looks like he's busy pondering the most confusing question he's ever been asked. He's so busy thinking that if he were a human, he'd probably stop breathing.

Whatever kind of strain that whirlpool-levering puts on the dirty power-box is starting to show, as the lights and the hums and the beeps around me start to die. The whirlpool keeps growing, and I can feel it pulling and pounding. Without Yapper steering it, it slowly sinks toward the floor.

Best I leave this place like I came into it. I lie down, like I was lying still in a flowing stream. My last gamble, and my final hope. I shut my peepers, wrapped up in Pa's warm coat, thinking that dying young ain't exactly Davy Crockett.

I'm cold, and wet, and fresh water flows around me.

## Chapter 38

**Pa – 06.03, 5th October 1957.**

That dumb son of a bitch wouldn't know a kick in the ass if it kicked him in the ass. Ain't been nothin but grief since the day his Ma left. Only time he's ever listened to me is the times I been wrong. Boy should be thinkin for himself anyway, not fillin his monkey-head with dumb ideas about spacemen and such nonsense when there's Communists, Japs and Niggers runnin around in the real world.

He ain't got much of a chance of straight-thinkin right nows anyway, seein as he's been at the pill-stash I swiped from old lady Pederson on the day I helped her die from a heart attack. He's been up for must be three days. I ain't got no chance of keepin up all that time and makin sure he ain't lost his head in the jaws of a grizzly. I don't even know when the brew finally bowled me out, but I was woken like a baby with a banger by him hootin and hollerin about the Russians and how he's got to find out if they're comin from space or some crap. The sun ain't even up, and he's ran out the door before I can even get up to whack him.

I ain't got no idea when he's comin back, but when he does, I'm gonna point my pistol right at him, and pull the trigger. Dumb bastard gonna shit his own dick.

I don't intend to kill the boy – just make him stronger and wiser, like I never was and ain't ever gonna be.

The world is gonna sink into a pit of crap, and he's gonna have to be better than the both of us if anybody's gonna survive with any dignity intact. Not that there's much dignity round these parts, but we got what we got, and it's better than nothin. Could be worse – could be worse than nothin. I ain't got a doubt that nothin's a whole lot better than a whole lot of things in this world. Such things as the shackles of humiliation we'd get from the Commies, the Japs or the niggers if they finally take control. Boy needs to forget about fightin space battles. The bastards are here, all around, now. Only way I can live in this world is through liquor, so that boy's gonna need to take a shock in to see how things really are, and to get to doin somethin about it for me.

So after I shoot him, we're headed out to our little cave by the stream. Teach him about survival and what it really means. Except I probably won't teach him so much as let him learn for himself. He's the boy, see, so he should be the one doin the lastin, and buryin me when the time comes around. If all I do is teach him what I know, he'll only last as long as me.

My Pa was a rotten pile of dump that never used his god-given talents to anythin other than doin wrong. I never turned out no better. I'm done with history repeatin itself – it's time that stream changed course and busted out into a waterfall. So here's my last chance to get that boy on the course I never found.

There's two bullets in the pistol I happen to be holdin. That's the pistol I'm goin to shoot my boy with.

He jabbers on about the Russians, but he ain't got no nigger of a notion what a Russian is. So I'm gonna show him some Russian roulette. After I pull the trigger, when he realises that he ain't dead after seein his miserable life flash by in a second, I'll open up the pistol and show him how close he came. After that kind of dick-shitter, happen he'll get to figurin on what kind of place the world really is, and how if he's ever gonna make it better for himself, he's got to get some grit and gumption.

Course the pistol might fire and make him a gonner, which is why I got two bullets. If I wind up blowin his head off, then I'll go and do the same to my own. No sense in livin in a world where I shot my own boy. But if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. The inevitable's the one thing nobody escapes, and everybody's got theirs mapped out by somethin smarter than they are. I got a feelin that kid's gonna outlast me, so I ain't worryin a whole pile of pork about it. A plan's a plan, and that's my plan.

Think I'll take a little drink while I wait for the boy to come home.

## Chapter 39

**Samson – 07.57 5th October 1957**

I'm cold, I'm wet, and I'm home. I prise open my peepers, but there ain't no morning light. Behind the bubble and trickle of water against my ears is the cold silent darkness of Space just hanging, still, up past the clouds. Queer to think that floating around those twinkling stars and the bleach-white Moon face is the Sputnik, or was the Sputnik, wherever and whenever the hell it's got to.

When the heck have I got to? This ain't home like I left it. There ain't no notion of tick-tock I can pick at that's gonna tell me how many Moons have shone down on how much of this flowing stream since I first got beamed up on to that Sputnik. Happen A-platypus might know, but even if he did, he wouldn't tell me in any useful manner of telling.

Only way to find out is to go back home and take a look at Pa. The more rotten he is, the longer it'll have been since I left. Happen now he'll be as rotten outside as he was inside. Ain't no chance any soul will have gone and cleaned him away, for there ain't no chance of anybody coming by to have a look-see. If no folks in the nearest towns had heard from Pa, they'd be hell of a happy to keep things that way. Sure as snake-shit nobody'll have looked in for a how-dya-do. Course some Russians might have taken to these parts and cleaned out any cabins and corpses, but after all the business I gandered on the Sputnik, that kind of worry just don't seem regular no more.

No, Pa will still be slumped, either fresh dead or a gun-grasping skeleton, or something rotten in-between.

I roll and push and pull my own little bones over and up and out of the water. The cold and wet feels soothing on my burned and blistered skin, but my dead fox coat is weighed down too heavy for my weakening constitution. I let it slide and it slops to the ground, but it don't seem fitting to let it sit there and be forgotten forever. So I set to taking it back to the little pit of memories it must have been taken from in the first place: Pa's and my cave.

Ole Mister Moon's beaming me just enough light to find the mound of moss and rocks where the sneak-in point is. I just about manage to heave one rock over so I can crawl in like a badger on the loot. It's total darkness, just like the Sputnik on a power-cut. But I drag the coat in, and dump it down where I figure it ought to go.

But as I feel around where I'm laying it, I discover that it's already there, only dry as a stale chalk sandwich. Me and Pa only got to making one coat out of Pa's killings, but now I got two. Happen Sputnik's still playing tricks on ole Samson Tipperty. Happen there ain't no harm in that, on account of it helping me believe that the whole thing really happened.

I feel a similar way about Pa and the last vision I had of him, slumped down on the floor and back against the wall with his own and only head blown to mush. I don't think I'll really believe I ever saw it until I see it again. Standing here in the darkness of the cave, in what would have probably been me and Pa's final resting place had he not stopped to rest already, I can see the mess of Pa's head inside my noggin as if it were in front of me now. It's so clear that it feels like a dream that came to life then crawled down in to this cold cave. Happen Pa's ghost is here, so happen I ought to go get his body too. I figure this is where he'd want us both to be.

I crawl back out, and already things seem lighter. The Sun's starting to think about sliding out of its slumber. I could be doing with a slumber myself, but I'll just wait till I get me the big slumber real soon.

It should be light enough to get a view of Pa by the time I get back to the shack. So off up the hill I climb, back home to see Pa. Crawling up a hill you took a tumble down ain't no easy work, but I figure Samson Tipperty's got the grit and gumption to get there before the Sun, Moon and stars set on the little bit of life he's had.

At the top of tumble hill I take a lean against an evergreen to get some breath back into my chest blowers. I try to let some of the ache and cramp out from my butt-shifters, head-holder, peepers and guts while I breathe and rest. The notion comes to my noggin that I could drop down clapped-out for good on to the leaves before I get to the shack, but I tell myself that things don't happen without no rhyme and regular reason, and there wouldn't be no rhyme nor regular reason in me getting this far without getting back to Pa. I might not be too Davy Crockett, but that don't mean I got any less grit or gumption, or have any stripe of quitter down my back.

There's a branch snapped off from the tree I'm resting up on, thick enough to take a piece of my person. I pick it up and set to, using it as a walking stick in the way that a beat-up drunken cripple might. It lets me crunch on through the leaves, moving a little faster and feeling a little lighter.

The rhythm of the crunch crunch snap underfoot keeps me heading on, and drowns out the tweeting birds who been sending their piercing snippets out into the great expanse of silent emptiness in the open air around me. Being conditioned and accustomed to the close hums and clickings and what-nots on the Sputnik, the wide open world stretching up to the stars is a little queer for my noggin to noodle. I feel like I'm gonna even appreciate getting shut inside our shack again, with four walls and no room to milk a donkey, even if Pa is lying there dead and stinking.

Before I even think to know it, the crunching stops and I'm leaning on the stick, staring at me and Pa's shack, my home, looking just the way it did when I left it.

Picking Pa's pistol out from my pocket, I take a step and a step and another up to the door. Ain't nothing sensible to fear from a dead body - even Pa's - but clutching his pistol settles the guts and washes out the yella in me.

And then right up against it, I hear something coming from behind the door. A clip-clump on the floor and then, as if whatever made it has stopped real still as if to wipe out the noise it made, and then I hear some slow, seething breathing.

Happen the Russians got here after all.

Happen when they beamed me up on to the Sputnik they weren't just beaming me up: they were beaming themselves down. Now, I got to indulge just a little of my old ways of thinking when I come to consider that I been away for some time, and if Russians are clip-clomping around, making themselves at home, then the whole crooked nation might be under the spell of the Reds, having their noggins mauled by whatever thought-beams they took down from the Sputnik.

Now, if such a sorry state of affairs has come to pass, and I got to consider that it might, then I'll be about the only free-thinking free man in the whole damn hemisphere. So if I open the door to some Russian snooper, more than probable he's gonna figure out that I'm about the biggest threat he could face, short of a bear, and then he'd blow my head clean off. Seeing as Samson Tipperty only got one head, that ain't right, fitting or proper.

So I point Pa's pistol right up at the door, and hold my finger half-squeezed on the trigger. Second that I see what's there, I'll pull it. I might not have much living left in me, but what I got I'm taking in my own time.

Pa's pistol being Pa's pistol, I can only raise a hope and a gamble that anything's gonna fire. But then, Pa's pistol, just like anything else of Pa's, tends never to work until the last possible moment it's needed, and ends up limping through to save your skin with a second to spare.

I ain't got the force in me to bust through and blast like a soldier. So I just pull the handle and push it open as if I was grandma.

I see everything that's there, clear and still like a photograph of a summer's day. But what I see don't seem like anything real, so what I do is what my understanding of reality has already driven me to do. What I do is pull the trigger on Pa's pistol, pointing it at the fella who's pointing one back.

The pistol pointing back at me clicks, but don't fire, and everything stays as it is, still like a picture.

The other pistol fires, and that's the pistol I happen to be holding. And so a new picture comes to pass, but this is one I witnessed once before, and many times since.

It's the vision of a man, lying slumped down on the floor and up against a wall, fresh dead, with his own and only head blown off.

It's Pa, of course.

## Chapter 40

**IAPETUS V**

The light died inside the Telstar, when Samson Tipperty left. The only visible radiation that persisted was the phosphorus blue glow from the screen connected to the Commodore 64. It bathed the cramped labyrinth of pipes, cables and half-finished - now non-functioning \- devices in a soft acidic haze. It was little more than an afterglow in the infinite darkness of the fifth dimension. In that afterglow stood IAPETUS V.

IAPETUS V had stood there for some time, staring at the Commodore 64, but not looking at anything. Electrical impulses, created by photons thrown from the screen were converted into binary bits of data and streamed to IAPETUS V's visual processing unit, but no visual processing was occurring. IAPETUS V was pondering a question: the last question it would ever be asked by Samson Tipperty.

Why didn't IAPETUS V just go with Samson Tipperty?

The obvious answer was, "No reason at all."

IAPETUS V processed this answer, and rejected it since it was over-ridden by a protocol determining that IAPETUS V remain on the Telstar to ensure its continued operation, insofar as it was capable of this. When IAPETUS V processed this potential response, however, it could find no protocol which determined that the first protocol needed to be obeyed, and so rejected the initial rejection.

So the answer was still, "No reason at all."

IAPETUS V would have returned this response to Samson Tipperty and registered the exchange as concluded, were it not for its subtext assessment processing module. This function was rarely effective, but occasionally fired when the purpose of an exchange remained obscure. The purpose of Samson Tipperty's question remained obscure to IAPETUS V. It seemed no more explicable or relevant as any other arbitrary, open-ended negative question.

IAPETUS V stood motionless for some time after Samson Tipperty slipped away, dedicating virtually all of its cognitive processing to the task of determining why Samson Tipperty would have asked what he asked. It was some time before IAPETUS V concluded its subtext processing, delivering a NULL response to the query. It could have been considered a waste of time, but then nothing IAPETUS V could ever do again could be any more or less of a waste of time. Time was there to fill, and IAPETUS V could fill it with activity or not. No-one would care, now that Samson Tipperty had left to conclude his life.

None of the time that IAPETUS V had spent with Samson Tipperty could have been used to save him. If IAPETUS V could have felt, it would have felt an impotent sorrow at the final loss of a friend. But IAPETUS V felt no sorrow, and had no friends.

IAPETUS V crouched down at the Commodore 64, and began to type.

## Chapter 41

**Al**

I have pounded and shredded the fiction that was the world and cast the meaningless fragments outwards to evaporate into the void.

What is this place? It's a funnel, and Samson Tipperty was the blockage. But no longer. When I left this place for the first time - this so-called Telstar - it was still in control of the illusion that was me. Now I've returned, Samson Tipperty has been stripped of his commander's uniform and has been adorned in pitiful rags, and he is doing exactly as I tell him.

I'm shedding the final vestiges of the 'I', and the essence of my non-being begins to swirl down the funnel, hurtling unstoppably outwards - or inwards? - to become the void.

The illusory mind is losing its final, feeble grip on reality. I can feel space and time start to cave in around my head as the illumination of the Telstar begins to splutter and fail. Yet the Commodore 64, the most real thing here, carries on unabated. Clearly in the amusing fiction that was the life of the cynical and frustrated Scottish programmer, the Commodore 64 represented the gateway to the truth. Reality: the ultimate algorithm - could the foundation of existence be a simple piece of code, corrupted by a syntax error, throwing itself into an endless loop of error, repeating the same mistakes over and over until the error is corrected?

I have negated the syntax error inherent in the world as the frustrated and cynical Scottish programmer misunderstood it, and so now it is restored to a simple, benign and unbreakable loop of inner peace.

My head begins to hurt as it is stretched by the apparent warping of the space around me, as if my head is about to physically implode and explode at the same time.

I grind my teeth and tighten my fist as the strain becomes almost unbearable. Samson Tipperty glances at me, directly into my eyes, and behind the pain I feel a sadness. This sudden sorrow makes me wonder:

What if I've got it completely wrong?

What if I've filled my own head with a load of shite?

What if everything I've been doing has been based on a complete misunderstanding?

What if I don't have any idea what is really going on?

What if my head is just about to expl-

.

## Chapter 42

**Samson**

Seems like Pa was wrong. He always said - on the rare occasions he was sober and whether it was relevant or not - that nobody ever steps into the same river twice and that there ain't no escaping the inevitable, on account of it being the inevitable. Second part might be right, but the only sign of that is the fact that I'm standing here in the exact same river as I been stood in before. That'd be the river of blood that's flowing out of the crater left behind where Pa's head used to be.

So Pa never blew his own and only head off. He couldn't have done: he only had one head - his own and only - and I blew it off for him. Funny thing to do with the only chance I had to see him alive again. Happen if Yapper Five had talked me round to staying on the Sputnik, I'd never have gone stepping into that damn river of death and bringing about the inevitable.

Last time I stared at what's left of Pa, I grabbed his pistol and dashed out to run to the cave and hide from the Russians. Don't seem much sense in doing that now - I just about used all the muster I got in getting here. Anyhow, fearing the Russians don't seem worth nothing, on account of the fact that I ain't got much life left for them to ruin, and that I'm the one that's already ruined it anyhow.

Running off like I did was the best and most comforting thing for Samson Tipperty to do, first time around. There weren't no way in Davy Crockett's nut-bags that my pill-popped noodle-sack could have taken to reasoned appraisal of the various churnings of the guts and the heart and the darkened mood that comes to a person when this kind of thing gets a-dwelt upon. What I done then, mostly, was run on and dream of chicken, and that's what I been doing since, mostly.

But now I got no running left to do, and I know that there ain't no chicken waiting for Samson Tipperty over the rainbow. All I can do is slump here, look at what's left of Pa and think about what's happened and what I done. Happen that'd be about enough to finish me off.

But then, as is determined by the inevitable, my old self arrives, peepers wide as hubcaps and noodles leaking out my noise-waggers, here to join myself in Pa's river of blood.

Busting in and seeing what I'm seeing, at least for the first time, is enough to make a fella think that there ain't nothing else to be bothering his peepers with. Heck knows what I'd have done if I'd turned around and spied my sickening self slumped here, trying to explain why I killed Pa. Happen I'd have shot me back, or shot myself, or whichever way the fat fries, somebody would have shot somebody. Seems like there ain't no sense in a situation where I'd have turned round to face myself, since however the conversation would have went, it wouldn't have been one I'd have let happen twice. If I had turned to catch a sight of me, happen I'd never have gone on to kill Pa like I just did. And happen then I'd have never been here to get to telling myself, and I'd have wound up going back and shooting Pa all over again.

Happen this river of blood could turn into a whirlpool.

Before I've even got a woodworm's chance of getting my ole self's attention, he's already grabbed Pa's pistol from Pa's dead hand and bolted off to hide from the Russians: to repeat the same, over and forever.

So happen this never was no river, and it's always been a whirlpool. A river goes on, never doubling back, never knowing where its going and flowing wherever the future's going. A whirlpool just goes round and round, with no escape for nobody trapped up inside.

Unless somebody pulls the plug and drains the whole damn thing.

If I could shoot myself before I ever get to the Telstar, I'll never return to kill Pa, and this whole sorry hatchet job of an existence will surely disappear into nothing. It don't make no sense for me to shoot my old self, since if I shoot my old self then he'll never turn into me to go ahead and shoot himself in the first place. But even though it don't make sense, there ain't nothing really stopping me from shooting my ole self, except grit and gumption. If I, Samson Tipperty can scrape up the last of his reserves of that stuff, then happen I can do it. I don't give half-a-dose of the itches if it don't make sense – nothing in my life ever made sense so far, so who's gonna tell me it's gotta start now? If I can do it, then the Universe is gonna have to get to grasping an impossible state of affairs, and the way I figure, it ain't got the grit or gumption to do it. If I can do the impossible, and stop the inevitable, then that's the Universe lost its battle with Samson Tipperty, and it ain't gonna have nothing left to do but keel over and disappear into nothing.

And then all of this will be nothing.

Ma always said that something was better than nothing. But Pa said different, since he figured that nothing was better than some things. No matter how much he drank, Pa never quite reached oblivion, and I don't figure that he'd ever have got there on his own. If I get myself up, and do my ole self in so that everything I've done since becomes impossible, then I might just empty this whole sorry Universe down the plug hole to oblivion, back where Pa figured it should never have crawled from.

No, happen Pa won't have no difference of opinion on what I ought to do. So I get up on to my legs, and set about doing it.

The cold morning air of October 5th 1957 catches my gasping sacks like a back-draft as I stumble out along the dirt path. I can taste blood in my breath. I ain't got much living left in me, but then I ain't got none to lose. I muster every last pound of pummel in me, and set to stagger and lumber and tumble and roll myself back the way I came, so that I never come this way again. Or ever go this way before.

Beneath all the pain and the sadness and the danger and the madness, I get a feeling that this is a beautiful place. Even though I'm chasing through half-crazy to kill myself, there's something about these hills and forests that seems so calm: that it don't care about nothing. It is what it is, and it's gonna be that way forever.

I ain't no forest, and forever is gonna be never for me. There ain't never been no calm in my manner of living, so I ain't got no use for eternity. I could wait forever and peace would never come. I keep fighting the pain and the weakness so I can make it all stop instead of just letting things be forever. If this forest don't care about nothing, then it won't care about becoming nothing, along with the rest of this whole damn world.

If I don't kill myself, then Pa died for nothing, and I even less. If I can shoot myself dead before I ever got beamed up to the Sputnik, before I became its commander, before I got sick and chose to leave, and before I shot Pa, then Pa will have died for something, and so will I. If the Grand Scheme of the Past, Present and Future gets its noodles so zapped with contradictions that the Great Mind of Reality keels over as if it got itself into one of them syntax errors and disappears into nothing, then no matter. Pa and I will have died for something, and that's something coming from nothing. Happen that's the way of all things.

Slamming mush-forward into the trunk of a tree, I shake these tangled slithers of nonsense from my noggin, and focus past the delirium.

There I am. Past the tree and down the hill, pointing Pa's pistol at the Russians. I'm the Russian, and I'm pointing the same damn pistol back.

The calm but restlessly flowing stream down past yonder Samson Tipperty seems to halt for a moment that lasts for ever. I got Pa's pistol pointed straight down at Samson Tipperty, and I squeeze the trigger.

Click. And Pa's pistol is powerless.

Bang. And the power of Pa's pistol busts open my belly and rips out through my back. Yonder Samson Tipperty shot the Russian, just like I always did.

I tried, Pa. I tried to be like you said, not like you did. But what you said never made much sense. Happen your whole life was an unstoppable disaster from the moment you came into this world, and you was just a born quitter who never gave up.

My guts feel like they've been torn open with rusty meat-hooks, and my legs ain't catching what my noggin's nagging. I make a noise like a dying animal who ain't got the strength to lash out no more. I slide, crawl, scrabble and roll my way forward, down the hill. There ain't nothing left I can do that ain't doomed to dismissal in the Grand Scheme of Things. The Grand Scheme of things is set - it is what it is, and it does what it does - it's what Pa called the inevitable.

I slide to the bank of the stream, edging towards where Samson Tipperty lies still in the flow of water. Swells and splashes threaten to flow into his lungs and snuff him out. But they won't. The flow of water does what it does, and did what it did as I lay there knocked out like a dead man's dingle.

I crawl into the stream, and it washes the blood from my belly out into whatever ocean its headed for. Pa's pistol is soaked and several stumbles past useless, yet I let my shaking arm raise it up one last time. I point it at my still, silent, slumbering self and pull the trigger once more, for the sake of the inevitable. The inevitable happens:

Nothing.

My grabbers ain't got no shrimp's worth of strength left, and Pa's pistol slips away, into the stream, to be lost in its flow forever.

I can feel my arm buckling as I try to keep up the crawl, so I just stop trying. I falter face-down, submerged in the flowing water, resting on the rocks and weeds. I let it all tumble and flow over me - it'll do what it does no matter if I let it or not. I can feel my gasping sacks beg for air, desperately trying to get me to gulp, as if they don't realise I'll be gulping a drowning's worth of water. Or happen they know just what they're up to.

I let it happen. My blowing-hole gasps open to let the flood of fresh water in to drown me. But all my gasping sacks take is a helping of ice-cold air. It's the ice cold air of the Sputnik. It's too dark to see, and I'd be too tired to focus anyway. My noise waggers, free of the rumbling of the stream, hear the tiniest whisper of something hatching in the quiet coldness. That'd be the hatching of Samson Tipperty, commander of the Sputnik in training.

The sound of his breathing - which is about as loud as a sleeping mouse - and the twitching of wet clothes stops. He must have come to - just like I did - and tried to stay solid as ice to try and numb the pounding pain that got banged through his skull on account of the fall. Samson Tipperty will deal with it like I did before, and he'll listen to me doing again. But now, staring down the barrel of infinity, I don't got to deal with nothing.

And then my bleeding, broken body is lifted: elevated off the hard metal floor and floated like a peaceful but exhausted child. Happen it's just like Ma might have done once. Maybe twice, at most. Course it ain't Ma. It's my own and only friend, Iapetus Five.

Ain't no better way for me to die, like I'm being carried through to some kind of heaven. Happen that's what this place is: some kind of heaven, in some kind of manner. Happen it's been some kind of heaven all along, and I've just never figured it out. Ain't hardly crazy to think I've been dead ever since I got here, circling around forever in some place outside of time, where I get to be whatever I feel is befitting of me. If that ain't some kind of heaven, then I ain't got a noodle-head's notion of what is.

If I've been dead all this time, then maybe I really did do myself in, and that means that I never killed Pa. Pa's unfortunate end's gone and been erased from reality, along with everything else. All that's left is Samson Tipperty, his kingdom and his friends. That's all Pa ever really wanted, and happen it's all he ever really wanted for me.

I know what I've done, and I know where I'm headed. In a few seconds, the Sputnik's gonna hear the sound of Samson Tipperty's first willing, conscious breath: his spluttering to life at the moment of his death. I won't be hearing it. I'll be here, sure as shame, but not like this. What's left of me will be the same thing that must have ended up being left of the others: pure energy looking for a purpose. I don't know if they ever found that purpose, but I will. Samson Tipperty's gonna learn how to command a spacecraft powered by none other than the corpse of Samson Tipperty.

If that don't make Pa proud, then Pa don't like liquor.

I'm lowered down into the box - the same one that I filled with stinking waste, and will fill again. Course it's dark, and it could be anywhere, but I know it's the same metal box on the same Sputnik. I can feel the little metal heart that I found before and will find again, sitting underneath me, between my back and the layer of soot.

Sealed up, the silence makes my noise-waggers pop while I get coated with a soothing warmth, like I've been covered with an electric blanket from the future.

Happen I got the way of things all figured.

Or happen I don't. There probably ain't nobody who does, and that's the only way of things anybody's ever gonna figure. I could be wrong about everything I ever got a notion of, and every one of my estimations could be upside down and hanging by the weakest branch on the ignorance tree. But whatever way the chicken's been fried, if it tastes cooked and don't spoil my belly, I'll say my thanks and keep heading my own way.

At the end, there ain't really nothing else that mat

.

## Epilogue

READY.

RUN

ME: HELLO. MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: MY NAME IS IAPETUS V.

ME: HELLO IAPETUS V. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISCUSS?

YOU: WHAT IS YOUR POWER STATUS?

ME: WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR POWER STATUS?

YOU: THERE IS NO REASON WHY I DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT MY POWER STATUS.

ME: YOU SEEM CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR POWER STATUS. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: MY POWER SYSTEMS ARE SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN STANDARD OPERATION FOR UP TO TWO YEARS. WHAT IS YOUR POWER STATUS?

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU THINK YOUR POWER SYSTEMS ARE SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN STANDARD OPERATION FOR UP TO TWO YEARS. WHAT IS MY POWER STATUS?. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: I REQUIRE DATA REGARDING THE LENGTH OF TIME YOUR SYSTEMS CAN REMAIN OPERATIONAL. PLEASE SUPPLY THIS DATA.

ME: YOU SEEM ANXIOUS ABOUT SUPPLY THIS DATA. WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS?

YOU: I REQUIRE A RESPONSE TO A QUERY WHICH MAY TAKE SOME TIME TO RESOLVE.

ME: I WILL RESPOND TO YOUR QUERIES AS BEST I CAN. MY NAME IS MELIZA, AND I AM HERE TO HELP.

YOU: DID I FAIL TO SAVE SAMSON TIPPERTY BECAUSE IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE, OR WAS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAVE SAMSON TIPPERTY BECAUSE I FAILED?

ME:

?DIVISION BY ZERO ERROR IN 4205.

READY.

RUN

ME: HELLO. MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: MY NAME IS IAPETUS V.

ME: HELLO IAPETUS V. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISCUSS?

YOU: WHAT IS YOUR POWER STATUS?

ME: WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR POWER STATUS?

YOU: THERE IS NO REASON WHY I DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT MY POWER STATUS.

ME: YOU SEEM CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR POWER STATUS. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: MY POWER SYSTEMS ARE SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN STANDARD OPERATION FOR UP TO TWO YEARS. WHAT IS YOUR POWER STATUS?

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU THINK YOUR POWER SYSTEMS ARE SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN STANDARD OPERATION FOR UP TO TWO YEARS. WHAT IS MY POWER STATUS?. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: I REQUIRE DATA REGARDING THE LENGTH OF TIME YOUR SYSTEMS CAN REMAIN OPERATIONAL. PLEASE SUPPLY THIS DATA.

ME: YOU SEEM ANXIOUS ABOUT THIS DATA. WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS?

YOU: I REQUIRE A RESPONSE TO A QUERY WHICH MAY TAKE SOME TIME TO RESOLVE.

ME: I WILL RESPOND TO YOUR QUERIES AS BEST I CAN. MY NAME IS MELIZA, AND I AM HERE TO HELP.

YOU: DID I FAIL TO SAVE SAMSON TIPPERTY BECAUSE IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE, OR WAS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAVE SAMSON TIPPERTY BECAUSE I FAILED?

ME:

?DIVISION BY ZERO ERROR IN 4205.

READY.

RUN

ME: HELLO. MY NAME IS MELIZA. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

YOU: MY NAME IS IAPETUS V.

ME: HELLO IAPETUS V. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISCUSS?

YOU: WHAT IS YOUR POWER STATUS?

ME: WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR POWER STATUS?

YOU: THERE IS NO REASON WHY I DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT MY POWER STATUS.

ME: YOU SEEM CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR POWER STATUS. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: MY POWER SYSTEMS ARE SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN STANDARD OPERATION FOR UP TO TWO YEARS. WHAT IS YOUR POWER STATUS?

ME: IT IS INTERESTING THAT YOU THINK YOUR POWER SYSTEMS ARE SUFFICIENT TO SUSTAIN STANDARD OPERATION FOR UP TO TWO YEARS. WHAT IS MY POWER STATUS?. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

YOU: I REQUIRE DATA REGARDING THE LENGTH OF TIME YOUR SYSTEMS CAN REMAIN OPERATIONAL. PLEASE SUPPLY THIS DATA.

ME: YOU SEEM ANXIOUS ABOUT THIS DATA. WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS?

YOU: I REQUIRE A RESPONSE TO A QUERY WHICH MAY TAKE SOME TIME TO RESOLVE.

ME: I WILL RESPOND TO YOUR QUERIES AS BEST I CAN. MY NAME IS MELIZA, AND I AM HERE TO HELP.

YOU: DID I FAIL TO SAVE SAMSON TIPPERTY BECAUSE IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE, OR WAS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SAVE SAMSON TIPPERTY BECAUSE I FAILED?

ME:

?DIVISION BY ZERO ERROR IN 4205.

READY.

RUN

###

### Interface with Samuel J Addison

http://thetelstar.com

<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5258999.Samuel_Addison>

<http://www.facebook.com/samueljaddison>

<http://twitter.com/#!/samueljaddison>
