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Monday, 29 November 2055, London
Relief floods through him. Relief at not being murdered by Borodin. Relief because it was a game, after all – the world is not ending – he is back home.
Looking around the Darkroom, he breathes deeply, his heart still racing in his chest. Now he’s safe, he is able to marvel at how true to life the experience was, and he wants to tell someone, anyone. Lestrange, or whoever he works for, has invented full-immersion virtual reality!
Issuing voice commands to his Lenz, he’s still unable to get a network connection, but he connects to his Lenz interface. He checks the time. And checks again. The evidence of his eyes defies his senses. It’s nine o’clock.
But nine o’clock on what day?
He checks the date. It’s Monday, 29 November 2055. Of course it is! It was a game he was playing; he wasn’t away for days. But even if he was playing a game, hours must have elapsed, surely? According to the clock, no time has passed at all. Rising from the chair, he walks to the door and into the hallway.
The house is in darkness. Lights flicker on as he moves around. Still no one is home.
“Mr Lestrange?” he calls.
The door to the library is open. A book is open on the table. It’s the book called Fin that he had been studying before he went into the Darkroom and forgot to put away. Then he remembers The Book of Mathew Erlang with a shudder.
He picks up Fin. The page it’s open at reads:
Through 2472 and the last days of human civilisation, Polkovnik Grigory Dragomirov tirelessly attempted to track the Lamplighter across Russia and into Siberia. However, he was actually following a breakaway section of the Kind, and the Lamplighter escaped to the American continent four months before Wormwood. The breakaway group, which included Angel Leventis and Peter the Sleeper, built a refuge inside a mountain in Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, where they waited for the end of history.
The streetlights are blazing. The curtains are drawn, and he pulls them to one side and peers out at the little street and the row of silent houses. The road is just as it was before he fell through the conservatory roof. It’s night-time. All the curtains and blinds in the windows of all the other houses are drawn. Above the rooftops grey clouds travel across the sky. Stars twinkle in between, mysterious, far away.
Going over to the shelf, he puts Fin back in its place. It’s the strangest thing he’s ever come across to have self-writing and rewriting books linked to a game. He trails his hand across the covers of the books until he finds The Book of Mathew Erlang. His fingers grasp the spine, and he starts to pull at the book and then stops.
This is weird stuff, and it will mess with your head. None of it is true. What does Lestrange want with me? Does he work for the government, or is he some genius crazy man?
Mathew sighs. It’s inevitable that Mr Lestrange will come home and find him unless he finds an escape route. In the hallway he steps to the front door and, not expecting it to open, tries the handle once more.
It opens. He’s free to go.
Standing for a moment, he gazes into the ordinary London street, not sure of himself. Then he steps out, pulls the door shut carefully behind him, and turns to his own front door a few feet away. Standing there, he realises he left the house in a rush and of course failed to take his key fob with him. Knowing he won’t find it, he searches his pockets anyway. The back door is open, but the houses are terraced, and there’s no way for him to get to it. He supposes he could knock on Gen’s door and climb her fence. But the door lock clicks open as he moves slightly towards it. Of course! The locksmiths changed the locks. The door now opens to his bioID. He’d forgotten.
The house is silent. Walking straight through to the kitchen, he pulls the back door closed.
Then he remembers.
“O’Malley!” But he doesn’t expect his cat to appear.
His mother will kill him. He closes his eyes and runs his hands through his hair.
Leibniz, idle and charging in the corner of the room, wakes, alerted to his presence.
“Hello, Mathew. It is late, and you have not eaten this evening. Would you like me to cook you dinner? Your medibot says you have a remarkably balanced metabolism. Congratulations! You can have anything you would like from our stores. Should I display the menu in your Lenz?”
“No, thank you, Leibniz. I’m not hungry.” The meal with Tristan only a few hours ago was enormous.
What am I thinking? He catches himself. I haven’t eaten since lunchtime.
All the same, he isn’t hungry.
Then O’Malley comes into the kitchen from the direction of the front room, crumpled and sleepy-looking. Stretching, he lazily saunters to Mathew, rubbing against his ankles and purring. Mathew bends down and scoops him into his arms. He seems like he’s been settled and asleep for hours.
“You are a horrible cat!” Mathew says. “Bad, bad, bad cat.” But he holds him to his chest and hugs him, incredibly grateful he isn’t lost.
A wave of exhaustion washes over him, and he wavers on his feet.
“Are you not feeling well?” Leibniz says. “Your health indicators all show you to be in remarkable health. Is there incomplete information?”
“No, Leibniz. I’m fine. I’m tired. I think I need an early night. Will you tell Mum I’m sorry I missed her, but I decided to turn in?”
He heads upstairs, carrying O’Malley with him, strips down to his t-shirt, and gets into bed.
“System. Lights off,” he says to the household control centre, and the room is plunged into darkness.
For ten minutes he lies awake, vivid images from the game churning through his brain. As he’s falling asleep, it crosses his mind to wonder whether tomorrow Mr Lestrange will come calling to complain about his conservatory.